In Excelsis Deo
by zenfrodo
Summary: '70s show; prequel. The Mortons' farm hides a deadly secret. Children are missing: vanished without a trace, hidden where no one can find them, prey to unspeakable terror. Now Frank & Joe Hardy number among the missing...and if they don't solve the secret, the brothers will never be seen again.
1. Snowbound

_A/N & Legal Disclaimer That Really Means Nothing, But Seems Obligatory for All Fanfic:_

_The characters of Frank & Joe Hardy, their dad Fenton and Aunt Gertrude, & friends all belong to Simon & Schuster. Those characters as portrayed here are based on the 1970s TV show "The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries", starring Parker Stevenson & Shaun Cassidy, created by Glen A. Larson, with some shades of the '50s Disney serial. Please note: This is a prequel to all my other tales, set roughly nine years before the events in "Voodoo Doll" — Frank & Joe are 12 and 11 here, respectively. I'll use blue-spine canon with the show when I can, but the TV show trumps all, for my stories._

_This tale popped in as I was writing The SF Vampire; see my profile for story order. Quick tour, for those not familiar with the show: Bayport's in MA, the Hardys' mother is dead, Aunt G lives with them to help raise the boys, and paranormal phenomena & supernatural beings are very, very real (and I take that particular ball and run very, very far with it.)_

_A BIG thanks to Jilsen, who pushed at me to do a full original tale set in the back-history, and to JD of the Hardy Detective Agency, the avowed "young Hardy"-story-hater who got enthusiastic about my young Hardys in the "House" tale. Enjoy!_

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_December 1970, Bayport MA._

Snow was _scary._

Kris Mountainhawk had never seen it, never felt it, never experienced it; it had never snowed in San Francisco. She clambered up onto the back of the couch and perched there, staring open-mouthed out the window. It was so…so…_white._ And deep — the stuff had piled over halfway up the door, and school had been cancelled because of it. More was coming down, huge fluffy flakes swirling in the wind and clinking against the window with soft _chinks_, like when she'd dropped a box of sequins during art period. It covered the whole world: trees, roads, bushes, yards, houses, cars — she couldn't even see the _mailbox. _It had completely disappeared under the never-ending, relentless white.

"Is this why mountains are white?" Kris demanded, wide-eyed. "This stuff?"

Mar Mountainhawk laughed; she was an older weathered Navajo with a dried-apple face and grey-streaked black hair — Kris's adoptive mother. She'd stayed home from Boston Center today, after the radio announced the school closure. Mar laughed a lot. Kris liked that; her original parents had almost never laughed. It still felt weird, having someone who claimed to be her family, who didn't scream or beat the crap out of her.

"Yes," Mar said, grinning. "It is. You should go out and play, little squirrel."

Play? In _that_ stuff? Kris could feel the deep cold through the windows. She shook her head fast, shivering at the thought.

Something smacked the window, exploded in a splatter of white. Kris squeaked, scrambled back, fell off the couch.

Mar was laughing again. Kris stared up at the window, trying to catch her breath and wondering what had just happened — did big chunks of that stuff fall from the sky, too?

"I think," Mar said, still grinning, "that means Frank and Joe want you to come outside."

Outside? What did that white explosion have to do with Frank and Joe? Kris picked herself off the floor, peeked over the couch again. To her shock, Frank and Joe were both out in that deep endless white, pushing their way through the snow to the Mountainhawk front door — well, Frank was pushing his way; Joe was jumping through it, or trying, alternating jumps with stretching his legs in funny-looking step-hops. Both were bundled in thick puffy nylon coats (Frank his usual blue and a matching wooly hat, Joe a brand-new red emblazoned with the Red Sox logo) and knitted red-and-white striped scarves and gloves; both were flushed and grinning as they pounded on the door.

Frank and Joe Hardy lived next door; Kris and Mar had just moved to Bayport from San Francisco that spring, and in that time, despite a rocky, scary start, the boys had become friends. "Stomp off," Mar warned them, as she let the boys in.

"Come on outside," Joe demanded at Kris as he stomped his feet. Chunks of that white stuff fell off his boots and scattered all over the entryway; he shook his gold-brown hair like a wet sheepdog, scattering even more white everywhere. "Chet's dad's getting the sleigh out — he's gonna come and pick us all up." Then Joe stopped, staring at the cut evergreen tree in the corner, laden with threaded popcorn-and-cranberry garland and salt-dough ornaments. "Indians celebrate Christmas?"

"Joe!" Frank elbowed his brother.

Kris only stood there, not understanding a single word Joe said. "Sleigh?"

"Of course we celebrate Christmas, dear," Mar said. _"Ya'át'ééh Késhmish_. That's 'Merry Christmas' in Navajo." She said it again with careful enunciation, Joe repeating it after her until he had it. "We never had snow on the reservation, though. Not in Arizona."

"You don't know what a sleigh is?" Frank said curiously, to Kris.

Kris shook her head. The clumps of white stuff were melting and leaving huge puddles on the tile. "That stuff's _water?"_

That shut both boys up, but only for a moment. "You don't know what _snow_ is?" Joe said.

Feeling stupid, Kris shook her head again, dropping her gaze to the floor.

"It doesn't snow in San Francisco, boys," Mar said.

"_You_ know what it is," Frank said.

Mar laughed again. "My brother lives in Oregon. This little bit is nothing compared to what Seneca gets."

"San Francisco sounds boring," Joe said to Kris. "No snow? So how do you get snow days?"

"Um…" Panicking, Kris looked at Mar. No help there. The whole going-to-school thing was still confusing; despite Mar's tutoring, Kris was behind everyone else her age. She didn't mind the little kids, but the older ones made her life miserable. If it hadn't been for Frank and Joe helping her stand up against the bullies, she would've run away again.

_Scaredy-cat, crybaby, dummy, weirdo…_

"Come on outside," Frank said to her. "I need someone to gang up on Joe with."

"No way," Joe said. "She's on my team." He looked pleadingly at Kris. "You are, right?"

Okay. Definite confusion now. "Um…"

Mar was already pulling Kris's coat and boots from the hall closet. "Go," Mar ordered her. "Don't come back until you've hit them with a couple dozen snowballs."

"Hey!" Joe protested.

"Each," Mar added. "And yes, she can go to Morton's farm with you. Scoot!"

The world was drowning in cold white, and Mar had decided to go crazy. Great. Frank and Joe waited with obvious impatience while Kris pulled on boots, bright pink puffy-nylon coat, thick mittens, red wooly bobble hat, hand-crocheted green scarf — then Mar pushed her out the door and into the deep white.

Blinking, Kris stood on the porch. It was too bright, blinding, and the snow was falling so heavily that she kept blinking her eyes to keep them clear. For her, the snow was almost mid-chest. She was a runty, mousy-blonde child, only a couple months younger than Joe (at least, that'd been the doctor's best guess — her original parents had never celebrated birthdays, so Kris had no clue how old she really was); despite her age, she barely came up to Frank's shoulder. Then a clump of flakes landed on her face, and she sneezed. "It's _soft!"_

Joe's snowball nailed her dead-center in the chest.

Shocked, she stood frozen, not understanding. What had she done? Then the second one hit her, same spot — they were _laughing _at her! — and she fell back against the door, fumbled with the knob until she got it open and scrambled back in the house, collapsing to a shaking huddle just inside, arms wrapped around her head. What had she done? They'd never thrown things at her before, never, ever!

Her original parents had thrown things, too. Things that broke. Things that shattered. Things that bruised and cut. They'd laughed when she'd cried, then they'd screamed at her to stop crying, to stop being such a baby, to grow up…

"Squirrel?" Mar said gently, crouching down.

On the other side of the door, Kris could hear Frank and Joe knocking, Frank calling her name. Tears streaking her face, she looked up at Mar. "They _threw_ stuff. They were _laughing_!"

Mar sighed, hauled Kris to her feet. "That's the point. Get back out there. Throw snow back. It's a game."

"But…"

"Don't tell me you're going to let them get away with it," Mar said sternly — her Implacable Indian Warrior face.

Wiping at her face, Kris gulped, shook her head.

"Get out there and defend the honor of the tribe, squirrel." Still stern, but the corner of Mar's mouth twitched. "Just don't put any ice or rocks in those snowballs, understood?"

With that, she pushed Kris back out the door. Trembling, Kris stood there in the snow, backed against the door, shoulders hunched, head bowed. Waiting for the next blow.

"Hey, don't you know how to make snowballs?" Frank didn't wait for an answer. "Like this." He scooped up some snow, packed it into a lopsided ball-shape, then placed the result in her hands. "Go on. Hit Joe."

"_Hey!"_

"You got her twice," Frank said sternly; he was only twelve, but he had Mar's tone down cold. "It's her turn. Not in the face, though." That to Kris. "Back of the head's legal. Knock his hat off."

She really wasn't understanding this. Frank wasn't angry, wasn't upset, and Joe just stood there, grinning, waiting.

"Some big brother you are." Joe crossed his arms, stuck his tongue out. "You're supposed to protect me. I'm the baby —"

Frank's snowball hit him square in the chest.

"Like that," Frank said to Kris, then ducked as Joe threw one back, missing Frank completely and splattering against the window. "I can hold him down in the snow if you want."

"I'm gonna make a snow fort," Joe said. "I need something to protect me from my evil brother." He looked pleadingly at Kris. "You're gonna help me, ri — _hey!"_

Her snowball nailed his butt.

They were laughing again. She had thrown something back, and they _laughed._ It wasn't a trick. They _wanted_ her to throw this stuff back. Her second snowball fell apart and missed Joe completely, and at that point, the battle was joined. It got even better when Callie Shaw showed up and the whole thing turned into _boys-vs-girls — _Kris's aim was non-existent, but Callie's more than made up for it. A pretty blonde tomboy, Callie was wickedly accurate, and Kris was so little, she simply stomped a hole in the deep snow and ducked down into it for impromptu protection from Frank and Joe's barrage.

"No fair!" Joe said. "You're girls. You're not supposed to be good at this!"

Another snowball nailed him from the front porch. Grinning, Mar stood there, holding another snowball.

"Mar's a girl, too," Callie informed him. "I'd take that back, if I were you."

"Yeah, but she's old — _hey!" _Three simultaneous snowballs, Callie, Mar, and Kris, all hit Joe at once.

"Mar's an Indian," Frank said to Joe. "You'd better surrender or she'll scalp you."

"Mr. Morton called," Mar said, before Joe could huff up in indignation. "He got delayed, but he's on his way. Take this with you, squirrel." She set a plastic bag down on the porch; it clinked.

"What's that?" Joe said.

"Adult stuff," Mar said. "And my homemade candy oils. Mrs. Morton said something about peppermint fudge."

Jangly bells — they sounded like the shaker-bells that Kris usually got assigned in music period_ — _made them all look around. Kris froze, staring. She recognized the Mortons' farm-horses, two huge black geldings named Clyde and Dale, but she'd never seen them trotting up Elm Street and breathing out huge clouds of steam, with harness were covered in bells and pulling something _weird: _a red wooden contraption with holly-and-ivy decorations and balanced on metal strips. Chet Morton and his sister Iola stood in the thing, waving and yelling at them: Chet was a roly-poly boy with curly hair and glasses, Iola slender and pixie-ish, her black hair sprinkled with snow.

"It's a sleigh," Frank said to Kris: his usual matter-of-fact know-it-all. "Like Jingle Bells. Mr. Morton does this every Christmas."

_That_ was Mr. Morton? The man perched on the front seat of the contraption didn't look like him: dressed all in red and green, a thick hooded cloak trimmed in white fur, a wreath of holly and ivy around his head, big black boots, a long, foamy white beard. Edging closer, Kris finally recognized Mr. Morton's face grinning at her behind the disguise.

Frank nudged her. "Don't forget the bag."

Kris darted back to the porch and carefully lifted up the bag — small glass bottles and one thick glass jug filled with amber liquid. Oh. That was the 'adult stuff'. Mar had experimented with a beehive in the backyard over the summer, and she'd reserved half the resulting honey for home-brewing; Mar had spent last night pouring off the results into jugs.

Mr. Morton accepted the bag with a loud belly-laugh, and waved his thanks at Mar. "Definitely making Santa jolly," he said, and patted Kris on the head before she could flinch away. "You boys scoot over and give this little one a window seat."

Santa? That's who he was supposed to be? He didn't look anything like the jolly Coca-Cola-colored man she'd seen on TV. Mr. Morton's get-up seemed older, somehow. More real. Solemn. Scary.

"You won't fall out," Joe said to Kris as he made room on the seat. "It's _fun."_

Iola patted the empty spot next to her. "Come sit by me, Joe."

Callie and Chet snickered. Joe looked from Kris to Frank; he was wedged between them. "I'm fine."

Frank grinned at Kris behind Joe's head. Ever since seeing _Snow White_ last month at the Bayport Cinema, Iola had decided that Joe was Prince Charming, much to Joe's disgust. Kris didn't understand why Joe hated it — Iola _looked_ like a fairy-tale princess, dark-haired and dark-eyed, imperious and regal, even though she was only Kris's age.

Kris loved fairy tales. Before she'd run away, her most treasured possession (filched from a garage sale and hidden deep in her closet under a mound of old pillows and discarded clothes) had been a gold-leafed book of fairy stories with jewel-bright colors and old-fashioned print. Her original parents had told her stories enough, angry stories about God punishing sinners for every little thing, but the fairy tales were different. Clever boys and girls who outwitted evil parents and who were rewarded by the fairies for being clever and generous, children who lived deep in magical woods with dwarves, deer, elves…

Mr. Morton clucked at Clyde and Dale, and the contraption jolted forward. Kris squeaked, grabbed at the wooden seat, then settled into the motion. For something pulled by horses and made of wood, it was _fast._ The bite of wind in her face had her covering her face with mittened hands and pulling her scarf tighter; the cold made her face ache and snow stung her cheeks.

The sleigh made the rounds of snow-covered Bayport's town center and residential areas. Mr. Morton stopped to pick up the rest of the Hardy's friends and collected more clinking bags and rattling boxes from their parents — luckily, Chet and Callie had claimed the spots directly across from Kris, so she didn't have to deal with Phil. Tony Prito, though, grinned at her as he helped his baby sister Anna up into the sleigh; the three-year-old promptly wedged herself between Kris and Joe and started on a long-winded, tangled story about her visit to Santa's "candy-land" at the Boston Mall.

Buried under ice and white, Bayport's town center still bustled with shoppers. Stores were open and lit with Christmas lights that glowed under the snow-cover, even in the gray overcast daylight. Kris couldn't stop looking around, twisting in her seat to take in everything. The air smelled dry, scented with resiny wood-smoke and baking bread; evergreen wreaths, boughs, garland, and multi-colored lights covered _everything._

Her original parents had never celebrated Christmas either, at least, not like this. It was _sinful_, according to them. Kris's last Christmas had been at Bay Area Center, just a couple weeks after she'd run away, and while Mar and others there had done their best to calm the little abused girl, Kris had still hidden in her room, too scared of all the adults, all the faces, all the noise to come out. She'd spent that day staring out her window at the Bay, watching the boats and water, only sneaking out of her room to snitch sandwiches and cookies from the kitchen.

But this…this was different. This was _fun._

They hit the edge of town and out into the countryside. The snow was actually deeper here, the land muffled in cold and white, the gray daylight turning darker as more storm clouds rolled in. The others chattered away, but Kris kept turning around, looking, smelling, feeling. It was still the same Massachusetts farmlands, still the same tree-lined road, but…it wasn't. Everything had changed overnight, all trapped under snow, blanketed in quiet and solitude, shining white against the gray dark. A glowing, glistening fairy land…

She caught Joe doing the same thing — silent, looking around with wide, wondering eyes.

"Not bad, huh?" Joe said. Then he looked down. "Mom loved snow."

"She'd make ice cream out of it," Frank said. "Chocolate ice cream."

"With strawberry jam." Joe looked like he was about to cry. "It was the _best."_

The Hardys' mother had died a few months before Kris and Mar had moved in. The thought of a mom that did good things for you…Kris couldn't understand it. "Maybe Mar knows how to make that stuff," Kris said shyly.

"It won't be Mom's," Joe said stubbornly.

"Mar's'd be _weird,"_ Frank said. "Cactus flavor. With dandelions on top."

"Buffalo," Kris offered, and Joe broke into a sad, lopsided grin.

The Morton's farm was another shock. Buried in snow and framed in multi-colored lights, the little farmhouse had candles in all the windows and pine trees in the front yard strung with popcorn and Fruit Loops. The barren-trees lining the country lane were coated in thick ice that glittered and the lane was marked by white paper sacks glowing with candlelight. Awed, Kris stared in delight — a fairy path, it was a fairy path straight from all the storybooks…

"We lit 'em early," Chet said. "Me and Iola didn't want to waste the first snow."

"Mar said your mom was doing fudge," Joe said hopefully. "_Peppermint_ fudge."

Chet glanced at his sister, then gave Joe a sly grin. "You have to be nice to my sister if you want any."

"Ewwww." Joe shoved past Kris and jumped out of the sleigh as Mr. Morton reined the horses to a stop right in front of the farmhouse; everyone piled out. "Get real. She's a _girl."_

Callie looked at Kris, then at Iola…then Callie and Iola simultaneously nailed Joe with snowballs. Kris didn't bother — she was close enough to go for a quick grab-and-dump-snow down the back of Joe's coat and was rewarded with Joe's piercing yelp.

That started all-out war, this time over a lot more territory and with trees for cover. Tony's baby sister was exempted from target-dom (enforced by a scowling Tony, who had even better aim than Callie); little Anna was given free rein to walk up and nail anyone on either side point-blank with snowballs. But Frank and Chet defected to the girls' side almost immediately —

"You're my _brother!"_ Joe yelled. "Traitor!"

"They got fudge!" Frank scored Joe's hat with a well-timed snowball before Joe could duck behind a tree. "Your point?"

"My _mom's_ fudge," Chet added. "You guys are _toast!"_

Even better, at Frank's urging, Kris made it up one of the barren trees; she was a good climber, and the ice- and snow-covered branches were a fun challenge. The tree branches held a ton of snow, gave her cover — the others couldn't aim through the branches very well — and it put gravity on her side. With aerial support, the girls' side soon had the others pinned down, and a well-worded bribe of possible fudge and hot chocolate got Tony's little sister solidly on their side.

Movement caught Kris's eye — and Kris stopped, staring towards the woods.

Something moved at the edge of the tree-line. Something on two feet. Something smaller than she was. A lot smaller.

A little, wizened, brown-skinned man wearing a pointed cap.


	2. Cookies & Trees

For someone who'd never seen snow before, that little rat had picked up the whole idea way too fast. If Kris had been bigger, Joe would've stooped to holding her down in the snow and dumping the stuff down _her_ coat.

Still, it was worth it, hearing Kris laugh like that. Joe'd had a bad moment when she'd fled inside back at Mar's house — when Kris had come back out, it had been obvious that she'd been crying and that she was badly scared. Joe couldn't figure out why. It was just snow, just a snowball fight, and _girls + crying_ usually equalled trouble for any boys nearby.

But Mar hadn't come out, hadn't scolded, had only pushed Kris back outside.

Frank evidently had figured it out. Joe would ask him later.

After Joe got revenge for all the snowballs, that is. Ducking another barrage, he wondered how mad Aunt Gertrude would get if Joe emptied a bucket of snow in Frank's bed tonight. Dad would probably aid and abet, up until Aunt Gertrude found out, anyway.

Aunt Gertrude was never any fun. Mom would've been right out there with him and Frank, throwing snowballs and helping them build the biggest snow-fort in the world.

Joe barely ducked another of Frank's throws. It wasn't fair. It wasn't. He idolized his older brother; Frank was taller, better and smarter at everything, good at sports, straight A's. Joe ran towards the slender side, leaner and faster, and he struggled with school — except for science, where Joe had gotten an A+ for his research project which had included a hand-signed letter from the head of the FBI and tons of pamphlets explaining modern crime-solving — though just today, fat Miss Callahan had also praised his singing and encouraged Joe to join the church choir.

Phil grabbed Joe before he could unleash another throw. "We'll lure 'em out. Get up that tree and get her. Or at least knock all that snow down on top of 'em."

"Me? She'll _kill_ me!"

"You're the best climber," Phil said. "And the crybaby's aim sucks."

Joe glared. "She's not a crybaby."

Phil rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Just get up there and get her."

Well, her aim did suck. Joe eyed the tree, then grinned. This promised to be _epic._ He waited until Phil and Tony had the others distracted, then Joe eased around the other side. Frank wasn't fooled, but he couldn't keep an eye on Joe and fend off snowballs at the same time — just as Frank yelled a warning, Joe had swung up to the first branch and was scrambling to the next.

He looked up, ready to duck any potential aerial attack from the little rat in the branches…

…but Kris wasn't watching. Perched on the highest branch, she only stared towards the woods.

Joe made it up to the next branch, and the next, slipping only a little. Kris still didn't react, even when Joe was right below her. He took full advantage of it, kicking the snow off the closest branches onto the girls, Frank, and Chet below — Frank's yelp was so, so sweet — but when Kris _still_ didn't react, Joe's curiosity peaked.

"What are you looking at?" He didn't dare go up next to her; the branch she was on didn't look big enough for two.

Her arms clutched around the tree trunk, Kris glanced down at him, then back towards the woods.

Joe peered towards the woods, couldn't see anything — no, wait. Something moved at the base of the trees, at the edge of tree and field: a dark shape against the snow…and Joe's breath caught.

A little man. A little brown-skinned bearded man…with pointed ears.

Joe yelled — suddenly, Kris swung down to the branch beside him. "Don't," she pleaded. "Don't say anything. He's not hurting us. _Please."_

Surprised, he only looked at her.

"They'll scare him. They'll hurt him! Don't tell. Please. _Please_, Joe!"

"Joe?" Frank started to swing up onto the lowest branch himself. "You two okay?"

"Don't —" Joe said, then caught himself. "Yeah. Stay there. We're coming down." To Kris, "I am _not_ lying to Frank."

"I didn't say lie! Just don't tell. Please…_please…"_

Joe opened his mouth, shut it. She looked so scared, he couldn't say no. Not saying anything wasn't lying. Not really. Maybe. "Okay. I won't."

"Thank you," she whispered, and right at that moment, Mrs. Morton came out from the house and saw Joe and Kris up in the ice- and snow-covered tree.

Well, okay, going up to the very top like that probably hadn't been the smartest thing in the world, but why did adults always make such a big deal over such things? He and Kris hadn't been hurting anyone, they hadn't gotten hurt, and they both knew how to climb. They'd been up trees plenty of times in the summer, and the adults hadn't minded _then._

Mrs. Morton ignored all of Joe's logic, and, of course, it was all Joe's fault that they'd both been up in the tree, even though Kris tried to explain (in a shaking, scared voice and trembling so hard she could barely stand) that she'd gone up first, that it'd been her idea, that Joe had only been trying to get her down. Mrs. Morton didn't listen and accused Joe of putting _that-poor-little-girl_ up to lying…and it got worse when Frank stuck up for Joe and backed Joe's story up.

It ended with both Frank and Joe being denied cookies and fudge for lying ("Your mother would be ashamed of you two. Be grateful I don't call your aunt!"). _That_ shut the rest of their friends up, because no one else wanted to lose their goodies, either.

It wasn't fair, and Mrs. Morton invoking Mom had been horrible. Last Christmas had been their first one without Mom. Dad had put up a tree, had tried to make it normal. It'd only made it worse. Joe had ended up spending Christmas in his room, not wanting to face the empty spot next to the tree: Mom's traditional post for handing out the gifts while Dad filmed the whole thing. Every year, Mom had always grabbed Joe, tickling him into a giggle fit when he tried to sneak past her to get at the presents. It had always ended with Joe snuggled next to her by the fireplace, warm, safe, and with a mug of hot chocolate and him and Frank splitting a mound of homemade Christmas donuts.

Not last year. Not ever again.

Mom would've listened. Mom would've believed him and Frank. Joe wasn't about to cry. He was too old for that, but Frank had the same scowling, scrunched look on his face.

Arms crossed, Joe sat by the fireplace, half-listening to Chet's grandmother tell a creepy story about her baby sister getting lost in the woods and never being found again. At this point, Joe was only waiting for Mr. Morton to announce it was time to go home. The bright, wonderful, Christmas-light-lit, snow-covered day had turned totally miserable, and Joe just wanted it to be over already.

A shadow — Joe glanced up. Kris stood there. She glanced towards Mrs. Morton, whose back was to them, and quickly passed Joe something wrapped in napkins. Cookies. "Hide it," Kris whispered, "fast."

Joe glanced at his brother, then realized that Chet and Tony were keeping Mrs. Morton and Chet's grandma distracted, that Phil was gesturing at Frank and Joe to _hurry up,_ and that Callie had crept over and did the same for Frank with something else that stained the napkins with chocolate icing. Joe quickly stuffed the contraband under his sweater and into his shirt, just as Mr. Morton called out for his wife to come outside for a moment.

"I'm _telling,"_ Iola said, the moment her mother was outside.

"You do," Callie said, "and I'll stuff frogs in your locker."

"Tattletale." Chet scowled at his sister. "Mom's not being fair, and you know it."

"I'm sorry," Kris whispered to Joe and Frank; she looked upset and near tears. "I'm _sorry."_

Cookies or not, if she hadn't gone up that tree, Joe wouldn't have gotten in trouble. _She_ hadn't gotten punished. _Her_ mom was still alive. "Crybaby," Joe said, glaring. "Why're _you_ crying? We're the ones who got in trouble. Because of you."

Kris jerked as if struck, then backed off, fled out of the living room and through the kitchen archway.

"That was mean," Frank said, and Joe twisted around, only to meet Frank's glare. "She tried to tell the truth, Joe. It's not her fault that Chet's mom's being a —" Chet glared over, and Frank stopped, tried again, "— that Mrs. Morton didn't believe her."

"She was the first one up that tree," Phil said. "The little tagalong's nothing but trouble, Frank."

Then again, Phil had been the one who'd ordered Joe to go up after her. But bringing that up would only get Phil upset and guilty, and Joe didn't want anyone else angry at them tonight. As usual, Frank was right. He was always right, and Mom had told Joe to listen to his older brother. Joe glanced at the kitchen archway, at his brother, hesitated, then pushed to his feet to go after Kris.

He entered the kitchen just in time to see the back door close.


	3. Runaway

_A/n: Thanks to SnowPrincess88, Jilsen, and TeamWhoeverHitBellaWithTheCa r for the reviews! See what happens when you review? You get publicity. ;)_

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Hunched over, scowling, Frank kept his arms crossed. If he acted angry, he wouldn't cry. He couldn't blame Kris; she'd told the truth, yet she _hadn't _tattled that Frank had urged her up the tree to begin with. She hadn't told Joe to go up the tree either — his impulsive, headstrong, un-thinking brother had done that on his own. But Frank couldn't blame Joe, either. If Frank had kept his mouth shut, he wouldn't have gotten punished, but Frank wasn't about to let his brother get called a liar.

No, this was all his own stupid fault.

But Mrs. Morton didn't need to remind Frank about Mom like that. That had been too low a blow. It wasn't like he or Joe didn't already know Mom was watching. Mom had promised them that.

Then Joe scrambled back into the living room, tugged at Frank's arm…just as Mrs. Morton re-appeared in the front archway. "Kris's gone," Joe hissed under his breath.

Oh no. Frank glanced at Mrs. Morton. She'd turned away, talking to someone in the entryway. Frank didn't wait, slipped back to the kitchen after Joe. One quick glance — the refrigerator door was cracked ajar, the sliver of light bright in the dark of the kitchen.

"I saw the back door shut just as I came in," Joe whispered, fidgeting. He kept looking nervously at the archway to the living room.

There was no other way out of the kitchen except for through the living room, and Kris hadn't come back. Was she _trying_ to get them in more trouble? Frank glanced back towards the living room, then went over to the fridge. It wasn't like frugal Mrs. Morton to just leave it open like that and waste energy. Frank pulled it open; he wasn't sure what he was looking for, but…

The milk pitcher was missing.

The Mortons had cows. They kept a big ceramic pitcher of fresh milk, always. There wasn't an empty pitcher in the sink, nor drying on the counter with the other newly-washed dishes. Kris had to have taken it, then. But _why?_

Stealing a milk pitcher and going outside in all that snow and the blizzard: it didn't make sense. None.

More noise from the living room: Mr. Morton's deep _ho-ho-ho_ and a jangle of sleigh bells. Frank hesitated, exchanged a swift look with Joe…then both brothers dodged out the back door, Joe shutting it quietly behind them.

Frank shivered. It was _freezing _out here without coats, even with the thermal undershirts that Aunt Gertrude had insisted they wear. They had to find the little trouble-maker quick; the sun was setting, and it was getting dark fast. Worse, the second storm that had been threatening all day had finally broken. Snow fell thick and fast, the wind swirling it through the fields and cutting visibility down to near-zero.

Then Joe nudged him. At the edge of the woods, Kris was crouched in the snow, the ceramic milk pitcher beside her.

What in the _world…?_

Joe had already started towards her. "Kris?"

Then Joe pulled up short so fast that Frank ran into him, just as Kris turned with a startled gasp — and something scurried away through the underbrush in a flurry of snow and rattling branches.

She was out here freezing all their butts off and getting them in even _more_ trouble to feed some wild animal?

But before Frank could tell her off —

"You _promised! _Joe, you _promised_ and now you scared him and we're gonna be cursed because we saw him —"

That was the most that they'd _ever_ gotten out of her about anything, but whatever she was babbling about made no sense. Frank glanced at Joe; his brother looked just as confused as Frank felt.

"— I was trying to get him to take the curse off, and now we're gonna keep having bad luck and you —"

Frustration and anger boiled over. If they got caught out here, he and Joe would get blamed again. Frank grabbed her shoulder, shook her hard. "Shut up! We're in enough trouble because of you!"

It shut her up. Wide-eyed, she stared at him with such open fear and _betrayal_ that it gave Frank a sick drop to his stomach…

She yanked free, took off running into the woods.

# # #

It had been all her fault, it had been, she should never have listened to Frank, should never have gone up that tree, should never have come. The Mortons hadn't invited her, after all. They'd invited Frank and Joe, and the brothers had only let her tag along because they felt sorry for her, and now they hated her, now they were all in trouble, now they were all cursed with bad luck because they'd seen the brownie…

_Crybaby, dummy, weirdo…_

Her brain pounded in time with her running. The trees had blocked the snow drifts, so the snow was shallower in spots, but it still made for slick, treacherous running. Kris didn't care. She dodged through the trees, trying to keep up with the brownie. He'd certainly drunk enough of the milk, almost half the pitcher, before Frank and Joe had scared him off.

Maybe the brownie would take the curse off anyway. Maybe he'd take her with him into a fairy kingdom and get her out of everyone's hair, so they wouldn't have to deal with a little unwanted tagalong runaway anymore.

Frank and Joe were _lucky_. They didn't know how lucky they were. Their mom was dead. They didn't know how bad moms really were…

The ground vanished under her feet, in a slurry of snow, twigs, and mud.


	4. Meetings

Joe didn't stop to think — he only took off after Kris. It was too cold out here, getting too dark, and Old Ma Morton's story about her baby sister disappearing out here was too fresh in his head.

Worse, he'd seen that little brown-skinned man, its beard dripping with milk, just before it'd startled and scurried off.

The wind howled, a blast of air that stung Joe's cheek with snow and ice, and between that, the furious snow, and the darkening forest, it was hard to see, hard to track Kris's small form running through the trees — Kris was _fast. _But then suddenly she wasn't there, and Joe ran right over the spot she'd been in, skidded on a patch of ice just as Frank ran into him…

…the _ground_ wasn't there.

Mud, ice, snow, pebbles, twigs, all crumbled down on top of them as both boys twisted, grabbed at earth and exposed rocks, trying to stop their fall, only to smack hard into the bottom of the shaft, Frank ending up tangled on top of him.

For a long moment, the only sound was both boys wheezing, fighting to get air back into their lungs.

"Joe?" Struggled, wheezed. Frank.

"Yeah." Coughing, Joe made it to his elbows, then yelped as Frank's knee dug into his back before Frank managed to struggle off him. Every last inch of Joe's body _hurt_, and his chest felt like it was on fire. Thin light filtered down from above, but too dim to make out much of anything.

In the darkness, something moved.

Both boys froze. Then thought caught up, and Joe managed to get his mouth to work. "Kris…?"

A quiet sniffle, more movement.

"We have to get out of here," Frank croaked, coughing. He leaned into the dim light, his hands against the earthen walls, testing and jumping for foot- and hand-holds, but only succeeding in sliding back down. His face was pale, scraped, bleeding, and smeared with dirt, his sweater ripped; he was visibly shivering. "Joe, if I boost you up, think you can climb out?"

Joe squinted up, studying the shaft wall in the dim light. It didn't look promising: muddy clay and damp rock, not many footholds. Trees were one thing. Slick wet rock was something else. His eyes stung, and he wiped at his face to clear the dirt out; his hand came away blood-smeared. "I'll try."

It didn't work. Frank couldn't boost Joe high enough. The closest hand-hold that Joe could see — a tangle of thick roots — remained tantalizingly, frustratingly out of reach. "Too heavy," Frank said finally. "Kris, you're lighter. Me and Joe can get you higher up —" He paused. "Kris?"

Joe's eyes had adjusted some, but it was still pitch-black down here. Shivering, Joe moved closer to Frank; they were out of the wind and storm, so it felt a little warmer, but not much. Joe thought he'd heard her over there earlier, but…

"Kris?" Frank said. "You okay?"

Silence.

"She was over there." Joe edged forward towards where he thought he'd heard the sounds, testing the floor with his foot before he moved. Falling down another hole was _not_ what he wanted to do right now. Finally his hands touched rock again, and he knelt, felt around on the floor. Nothing. "She's not here." Then his hands hit a curve in the rock, open space and a slope in the ground. "There's a tunnel."

"Great," Frank groaned. "We find her, let's kill her."

"But how's she seeing?" Joe heard shuffling noises, then Frank bumped into him; Joe snagged his brother's arm and Frank knelt beside him. For a moment, both boys only sat there, huddled close and shivering. Finding a hidden cave on the Morton farm would normally be a great adventure, but right now, Joe only wanted to get _warm._

They had to be missed by now. The Mortons had to see that three kids were gone and not in the house, and with all the deep snow and all the tracks Frank, Joe and Kris had left, it had to be easy to find them. It had to be.

Joe bit his lip. He really, really hoped Mom was watching, like she'd promised…

"There's wood here," Frank said suddenly. He leaned away from Joe: gritty, scraping noises, as if Frank was running his hands over the ground. "Wood planks."

"Planks?" For some reason, all Joe could think of was Applegate's abandoned farm and the missing treasure supposedly from Old Man Applegate's pirate ancestors. "What would pirates be doing _here?"_

"It could be an old mine shaft," Frank said.

Trust his _everything-has-to-make-sense _older brother to take all the fun out of it. Joe opened his mouth, then stopped.

There was light. Faint, blue, and low to the ground, far down the tunnel.

"Kris?" Frank said.

Rapid, fast clicking. The light held steady, not moving, then it winked out, leaving the brothers in complete darkness.

"C'mon," Joe breathed, and started to feel his way carefully towards where the light had been, down the tunnel.

Frank grabbed Joe's shoulder. "Joe, we can't explore a cave in the dark. We need to stay here. Where they can find us. Where we can hear them! They're looking for us. They have to be."

Joe didn't answer. It didn't sound like anyone was searching: only silence and the wind howling above. If anyone had been looking, they'd be yelling names, and Joe couldn't hear _anything._ Mr. Morton had a loud voice — he could be heard clear across the fields when he bellowed.

He heard Frank's breath catch. His brother must've realized that, too.

"They have to be," Frank whispered. "They _have_ to be."

_But they're not,_ something whispered in Joe's head. _They don't care that you're gone. _Joe bit his lip again. "Kris could be hurt. Frank, she might've fallen down there. We have to help her."

"I didn't say —" Then Frank stopped, sighed. "You're right." There was a sudden, weary smile in his voice. "I'm the older brother. I'm supposed to be the one who's right."

"Since you're so old, you go first," Joe retorted.

Frank glanced up towards the hole. "I just hope they don't pass us up."

_The storm's too bad, and you ran away, _the something whispered again_. They think you're just being bad again._ Joe swallowed, then reached out and gripped Frank's shoulder. Both of them hugged the wall, blindly feeling their way along stone and earth. The air felt thick, heavy, and damp, as if they pushed their way through dark foam…

Suddenly the blue light flared again, blinding after so long in total darkness and Joe shielded his eyes, squinted. Sniffling, Kris sat huddled against the stone, curled around her knees and wiping at her face, face dirt-smeared, bruised and scraped bloody, glaring up at them.

Her fingertip glowed a faint blue.

"There you are," Frank said angrily. "Why did you run? And what were you doing out — _oh…"_

"Oh, _wow,"_ Joe breathed.

Something peeped out around Kris. Huge dark eyes, a small wizened bearded face covered by a floppy pointy brown hat, brown leathers, long slender pointed ears, spindly brown-skinned arms and legs…

"Don't touch him," Kris said. Low, from clenched teeth. Trembling. "You touch him…you hurt him…I'll…I'll _kill _you."

That stopped both brothers cold. Joe had _never_ heard her sound like that. "Kris…?"

"_I said don't!"_ It rang through the stone. Kris had scrambled to a crouch, hands clenched; the blue light flared. Tears streaked her face again. "You grabbed me. You were going to _hit me._ You called me names. I thought you were my _friends!"_

"Kris, no," Frank said, kneeling down. His voice still wheezed, raspy, fighting back coughs. "I wasn't going to hit you. I was just mad, that's all."

"And why would we hurt him?" Joe said, bewildered. "He's _cool."_

The little man had moved further behind Kris, watching the brothers with those huge dark eyes. It chittered, fast soft clicks with a curious rising tone.

Openly suspicious, Kris looked from Frank to Joe and back. "He says he's sorry about the bad luck. He can't help it. It just happens." Suddenly the blue light winked out; there were shuffling noises. Kris sniffled, gulped. "I can't keep the light up. I'm trying."

"It's okay," Frank said quietly.

Joe shivered: Kris and her magic tricks. She kept insisting the tricks were real, and she never showed the brothers how to do them, no matter how much they begged. They'd figured out that the light-trick had to be flash paper — but Joe had no clue why she had some on hand now, or how she got it to last that long. Or why it'd suddenly gotten brighter like that.

The dark seemed deeper after the light, as if something waited for them, somewhere in it.

"Sorry," Kris said. Muffled, as if her head was buried in her arms.

Silence, then shuffling noises. "It's okay," Frank said again. "Truce?"

Joe reached, found Frank's hand outstretched, just as Kris added hers to the grip. "Truce," she whispered.

There were rapid clicking noises, then suddenly orange light flared, a tiny flame that danced in the little man's hands — a small oil lamp.

They were in a small cubby space, a natural carve of white limestone that had thin glittery veins running through it. It looked like the Santa display at Sears downtown, and the glittery stuff flaked off in Joe's hands when he rubbed his fingers across it. The passage they'd been following continued further into the rock, into darkness.

"I've been calling him Click." Kris's voice quavered; she swallowed, tried again. "He won't tell you his real name. That's one of their rules. But he said the milk was good. He took the curse off. He had to, because that's their rules, too."

None of that made any sense. The little man — Joe's brain stubbornly insisted "_elf!"_ — stayed half-hidden behind Kris, his hands on her knee and shin as he peered up at them, uncertainty and fear in his stance. For a long, silent moment, two boys and small wizened elf only stared at each other.

Something…there'd been something in Mom's bedtime stories about this. Mom had loved fairy tales and ghost stories, but Joe hadn't paid much attention to those. He'd been far more interested in the Sherlock Holmes stuff that Dad had read to them, but a few of Mom's fairy tales had been wonderfully gruesome enough to hold his and Frank's interest. Two things had been very clear in those tales: never anger a fairy, and never break a promise to it. _ Ever. _

_But I won't hurt you,_ the something whispered in his head again. _I would never hurt you. _

Joe swallowed, hard. Some of the things that had gotten fairies mad in those tales had been really stupid, but now wasn't the time to argue. He knelt down to the little elf's level and dug inside his sweater and shirt. By some miracle, the cookies weren't broken, and Joe pulled them out, offered them to the elf. "I'm sorry, too," Joe said to him. He had no idea if the little elf would understand him, but it couldn't hurt. "I didn't mean to scare you. I didn't know you were there."

"Joe," Frank breathed, shivering violently, "careful. He might hurt you!"

Joe shook his head. "This is his home. Aunt Gertrude says you should always bring a gift if you visit someone's home. _Ya'át'ééh Késhmish," _he said to Click. "That means 'Merry Christmas' in Indian."

That got high-pitched, breathy hooting that sounded like laughter, and the elf broke into a huge smile that nearly split his head in half. Click gently touched Joe's hand with one spindly, elongated finger, then took the offered sugar cookies. They were Mrs. Morton's special ones with colored buttercream icing: one the shape of a Christmas tree with silver sprinkles, the other Santa Claus, complete with a red M&M for a nose.

Joe glanced up at his brother; Frank had bowed his head. "You're right. I'm sorry, too," Frank said to the elf. "Here." Frank knelt, pulled out the wrapped fudge, and gave it to Click, who cautiously tasted it, then broke into another huge grin and twirled around in an impromptu jig.

Despite the situation, Joe and Frank exchanged grins. Just what they needed: an elf on a sugar buzz.

Kris had gone wide-eyed. Then Joe noticed that he wasn't shivering. He wasn't completely warm, but he at least wasn't as cold as he had been back under the open shaft.

"Um…" Frank hesitated again. "…Click…your home's nice and everything, but we can't stay. There's people looking for us. Is there a way out of here?"

_They aren't looking for you,_ the something whispered again in Joe's head, and this time, Joe looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. _They've given up. They don't want you anymore. They think you're dead._

The little elf cocked his head, then chittered something at Kris. "He says there is," Kris said slowly. "But we're too big to use it. No…wait…that's not right…" She fell silent; Click touched her hand. "We _can't_ use it. Humans just can't." She bit her lip. "He says he could climb up the hole, but he's really scared of big folk."

That ended it. Joe had read history stories about what happened when adults found something interesting, and the stories got really awful when the "something interesting" was alive. "I don't want him hurt," Joe said.

"Kris," Frank said, just as slowly, "you _understand_ him?"

Kris edged away. "I hear him in my head."

Was that what that whispering was? It seemed natural that a fairy could talk in his head; Joe didn't question it. But before he could say anything...

"That's not possible," Frank said. "There's nothing in your brain to make a sound _with."_

"I hear him, too, Frank," Joe said stubbornly. "He's been talking to me. He told me they're not searching for us because of the storm."

"You hear him, Joe?" Kris sounded delighted. "Really? You can? That's —" The little elf cut her off with urgent clicks, and Kris stared. "Joe…he says he hasn't been talking to you. He hasn't said anything to you at all."

"But I've been _hearing —"_

Light burst up from the downward passage, blinding white and blue, shining in brilliant rays…


	5. Temptation

_**A/N: Thanks to SnowPrincess88 & Stork Hardy here and to JD, PiperMerlyn, Copagirl, & rokia over at the Hardy Detective Agency for the reviews! You guys rock!** _

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Light. _Warmth._ Frank felt horrible, aching and bruised all over, and there was a catch in his chest, like he couldn't breathe right. Worse, his head itched inside his skull, a maddening sensation that was growing into a sick, painful headache. But the brilliant light made him go limp, sudden heat radiating all through him, and he sagged against the stone.

The little man — elf, brownie, fairy, whatever — and the light…it was impossible. It couldn't be real. It couldn't be happening. But it was. It couldn't be one of Kris's magic tricks (though Frank wondered why she'd carried the light-trick stuff with her, but then again, girls did all sorts of strange stuff for reasons that he couldn't figure out). There was no way she'd had a doll or puppet with her, not that size. Click moved too real to be a puppet, anyway.

Okay. Even scientists admitted that they hadn't discovered everything yet. They'd just discovered that Stone Age tribe in South America, after all; that particular issue of _National Geographic_ had kept Frank fascinated for days. Maybe there was a race of little people living in caves underground. Maybe.

But on the Mortons' farm? The solid, everyday, regular, normal _Mortons?_

"It's _her_," Kris said, openly awed; when the light appeared, Click had squeaked, had hidden behind her again. "It's _her! _ She wants to see us!"

Okay. Now Kris was just being weird. _"She?"_

"The queen," Kris said. "The fairy queen — she rules here." That got another series of clicks and chitters from Click; he sounded angry. "Sorry…I'm _sorry_. I don't know what else to call you."

"The good neighbors," Joe said. "That's what Gramma Kelly says. The fair folk."

They were cold, dirty, and wet, they were hurt, they were hungry, and Joe and Kris were claiming fairies. Kris at least had an excuse: her original parents hadn't exactly given her a solid grip on reality. Joe, though…Dad always said a detective needed to use his imagination, but Joe took it way too far. Frank sighed. Whatever Click was, that light was warm. It was _light._ That had to mean people. Maybe someone who could help them — maybe another way out!

Frank pushed himself upright. He was the oldest. That meant he was in charge, no matter what he felt like. Mom had told him that, before she died. "C'mon."

Though if that light was coming from a talking lion, Frank was going to _run._

They all stopped at the edge of the tunnel, staring into the source of the light. It was a big, glittery space, carved of more white stone in all kinds of weird shapes, and Frank heard water dripping somewhere. But that wasn't what made him stop.

No, not a lion. Most definitely not a lion.

A woman.

_Mom…_

# # #

Joe couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but stand there.

_Mom. _

It couldn't be. It _couldn't_ be. Mom was dead. She'd died last fall. Joe had been with her in the hospital room, him and Frank and Dad. They'd waked her body in the living room. All the old aunts and uncles and Gramma had done all the stuff to make sure she went to Heaven. The living room had stunk of lilies, tobacco, and rotten meat for days afterwards.

But…

"My son." The woman knelt to look Joe in the face, holding her arms open. She was dressed all in white and silver, airy robes that floated in the spring breeze that filled the cavern with the fresh smell of warm grass, apples, and flowers, and light surrounded her in a silvery halo. "My dear little Joe."

"Mom," Joe whispered.

"No!" Frank grabbed him. "That's not her. It has to be a trick. Mom's _dead._" But Frank's voice trembled, his eyes glassy, his cheeks flushed, damp.

"But you can't want him," Kris pleaded, at the same time. "They don't believe in fairies. It's me you want. You told me so!"

Mom's gaze turned from Joe onto Kris, who gasped and fell back against the wall, shaking. Before Joe could ask what was wrong, Mom's gaze had turned back. Soft, intense, full of love.

"I'm not dead, Joe." Lulling, comforting. "I'm in Heaven. And now I'm here, with you. I told you I'd never leave you. I told you'd I'd watch over you, remember?"

Joe nodded. He was scared to move, scared that if he did, if he touched her, she'd just break apart, she'd go away, that it'd all be a dream again.

Maybe his body was smarter than he was.

But why was Mom only looking at him? Frank was right there. Mom loved Frank, too. She'd cuddled them close in her hospital bed, had promised to watch over both of them, not just Joe. "Mom," Joe said, and he couldn't stop his voice from trembling; he sounded like a little baby and hated it. "Frank's here, too. He's right here."

"Of course he is." Still soft, soothing. "I've missed you, my dear little son. You've grown so tall, so fair…"

"You didn't miss _me?"_ Frank whispered.

The pain in his brother's voice hurt. It wasn't right. Mom had promised both of them_. _Joe opened his mouth —

Kris's breathing caught; she was staring at Mom. "No," Kris breathed. _"No…"_

Mom still only looked at Joe, her face sad and smiling at the same time. She held her arms out, waiting, inviting.

Joe missed her hugs, so tight they'd make you squeak. "Mom," he swallowed his tears down, "Mom, _Frank's_ here." Wasn't she hearing him right? Maybe being dead hurt your hearing. Maybe she couldn't see Frank.

But why was she just standing there? Joe looked past her; the light was shining from some sort of doorway, so bright he couldn't make it out clearly. The slight breeze stirred the dust in the cavern into small dust-devils, swirling through the rock.

"Come here, Joe," Mom said softly, kneeling down, arms wide. That did it. He wanted her hug. He _needed_ her hug. It'd been so long. Joe took a single step forward…

"_No!"_ Kris flew past Joe, threw herself at the woman, striking her with fists. "_Leave him alone! _Don't touch them! You're _evil!_ You're _evil! _Don't you dare touch them!"

With a snarl, Mom slapped Kris to the ground, and suddenly…

Teeth sunk into Joe's left hand, and Joe yelped, jerked, heard Frank do the same — Click had _bitten_ them! But then…

…she wasn't Mom anymore.

It happened so fast, Joe wasn't sure what he saw. The light flared, and Joe yelled, fell back against the rough stone — there was a dark-haired woman there, skinny and mean-eyed, then something _else,_ gray and toothy…

Then Mom was back.

An illusion? Some type of stage trick? But now Frank had shoved in front of Joe, and Kris had scrabbled back, ending up on the ground in front of them. Frank had his scout's jackknife out, the knife he was so proud of. Dad had gotten it for Frank after Frank had earned both the camping and backpacking badges that past summer, and Frank carried it _everywhere._

"It's my mom," Kris breathed, shaking. "She'll hurt you. She'll hurt you bad. Don't go near her. _Don't."_

_Her_ mom? Confused, Joe stared from Kris to Mom, but now Mom had straightened, arms crossed, and Joe gulped. He remembered that look, the look that said Mom _knew_ what he and Frank had done and trying to get away with it was pointless.

"Leave us alone," Frank choked out. "Leave my brother alone. Go away. Go away or…or…I'll _cut_ you!"

Joe couldn't have heard that. _"Frank!" _

"Put that away, Frank," Mom said sternly. Now she was looking at Frank, and it wasn't a good look. "You know better. You shouldn't play with knives."

"You told me," Frank said, his hand white around the knife. "You told me that I had to watch out for my little brother. Don't you remember?"

Shivering, Joe struggled to think through the thick fog in his head. That knife was so small, so puny. "Frank, that's _Mom._" But even as he said it, it rang false. Mom had loved Frank, too. Mom had never ignored Frank. Mom had never slapped anyone, not even when Joe had gotten mad at her.

"It's not Mom, Joe." Tears streamed down Frank's face, but he didn't move from in front of Joe. "Someone wants to grab us to hurt Dad. It's a trick. A dirty, rotten _trick._"

Kris was struggling to her feet; Joe helped her up. She was favoring her left foot — but suddenly she grabbed Joe's hand and placed it over Frank's, on the knife.

Joe gasped, flinched back, but Kris and Frank's combined grip stopped him.

No. That definitely was not Mom.

"Noon-forged sssteel," the gray thing hissed. "Ssstinking of sssun and sssummer and _his_ kingdom…oh, I won't forget any of you three little dears. Your ssscent on my heart, cross to die…and_ you —_" It jabbed a finger at Frank, and Frank stabbed at it, but it was too fast, "I'll take you _first."_

"_Leave my brother alone!"_ Joe lunged, only to be grabbed and held back by Frank — it'd been a _fake,_ it'd made them cry, it'd pretended to be Mom, it'd wanted —

The thing only _smiled._

Then it was gone.


	6. Out of the Frying Pan

**_A/N: thanks to Stork Hardy & SnowPrincess88 for the reviews - and all my readers, you folks rock! _**_Sorry for the lateness of this updat__e; we have a situation with my furry writing kitty-buddy Frodo that's been causing a lot of stress. _

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The dark came back.

The _cold_ came back.

Fear froze Kris in place; Frank and Joe both yelped. Something slithered with muffled scrapes and whispery breathing, then something hit the rock with a metallic chink, then utter, dead silence.

"Frank?" Joe, sounding shaken and panicky. "Kris?"

"Here." Frank, just as shaken.

"Yeah." Hungry, tired, cold, miserable, Kris collapsed to sit, buried her head in her arms. Her face stung and her jaw ached where her mother had slapped her; her hands were scraped raw and bleeding where she'd hit the rocky ground. She would not cry. She would _not._

Rapid, frantic chittering. Click was pushing at her. _Get out. You must get out._

"C'mon," Joe said, gulping as if he fought back tears; his hand found Kris's shoulder, and he helped her up. "Before she comes back."

"There was another tunnel back there," Frank said, his voice tired and pale in the dark. "Another way out. Where all the light came from." He broke into a violent coughing fit, partially collapsed against Joe and Kris for support.

"But we'll run right into where _she_ is," Joe said. Something metal scraped on stone. "Frank, you dropped your knife."

"Hold onto it for me," Frank said.

Kris heard Joe hesitate, a quiet intake of breath. "Stay close," Joe said quietly to her. "Hang onto me."

Feeling their way in the dark, they made their way along the wall, then up the tunnel; Kris tried to make her finger glow again, just for a little light, a little comfort against the dark and cold, but couldn't — she was too tired, too weak, too hungry, dizzy and disoriented; her head ached horribly. All she wanted to do was lay down and sleep.

The tunnel felt even longer, colder, steep, slick and treacherous, but finally they made it to the edge, and halted. The shaft they'd fallen down — thin sunlight filtered down from the outside, through tangled roots and overhanging rocks. Kris bit her lip. She knew fairy tales too well, all the warnings, all the stories. It'd been sunset when they'd fallen here, the sky dark with storm clouds. They couldn't have been down here _that _long.

"Light," Frank breathed. He staggered along the wall to the weak patch of sunlight, stared up.

"I don't hear anyone," Joe said miserably. "We would, if they were looking."

Kris shivered; it was colder up here, even with the sun. "Maybe if we yell —"

"If they're even out there," Joe said.

Frank had collapsed against the earthen wall of the shaft, looking at her, at Joe. "You have the sun. The _sky."_

Face flushed, his voice raspy and thick, Frank held himself oddly, as if his stomach hurt. Remember what the monster had said, Kris glanced at Joe; she didn't want to say it.

"You okay?" Joe said to him. "You're acting weird."

Trembling, Frank looked down "Yeah. Fine." Then suddenly he raised his head, his face determined. "I have an idea. C'mon."

Kris had scraped her hands against the wood earlier. Now Frank bullied her and Joe into dragging a couple planks to lean against the wall of the shaft, a weak, crumbling ramp that went about midway up the shaft wall, close to the rough rocks and tangled roots. The wood was mushy in spots, smelling of damp and rot; shelf mushrooms grew along one side of them.

Through it, Click watched them from the dark of the tunnel, not coming any closer, his eyes gleaming in the faint light like a cat's. He chittered at them, but Kris's head hurt too badly to hear him right; she rubbed at her temples, but it only made it worse.

"You're the lightest," Frank said to Kris, his voice heavy, labored. He'd collapsed back against the earth wall of the shaft again, breathing hard. "Use those. Get up, climb out. Joe, if the planks hold, you go next."

"I'm not leaving you alone," Joe said stubbornly.

Frank closed his eyes. "Someone has to help her find her way back. You know the woods. She doesn't."

Joe glared, lower lip thrust out. "And if that woman comes back?"

Frank didn't answer.

Eyeing the planks, Kris nervously shifted from foot to foot. Frank had a point: Kris didn't know the woods. The couple times she'd been out to Chet's, the Mortons had put them to work; they were firm believers in the whole "idle hands are the devil's playground" thing. Because of that, Chet tended to come into town when he wanted to hang out, but Kris didn't mind the Mortons' idea of work. Learning to milk a cow while fending off a horde of mewing kittens had been fun,though when Joe had started making sound effects, Mrs. Morton had ended the lesson quickly_._

"Here." Joe handed Kris the jackknife. "Cut bark off trees. Like this." Joe sliced into the edge of a plank, peeled a splinter off. "That's what Daniel Boone did to mark trails." He glared back at Frank. "Don't say it. If the plank breaks, I can't go with her."

Frank said nothing, but Kris still shuddered as she took the knife. Joe wanted her to cut trees in a fairy wood. But Click chittered, then crept out to touch her hand. _Calm_, that touch said.

She took a deep breath; Frank and Joe tried to keep the wood braced as she swung up onto the plank, and the whole thing wobbled as she stretched up on tip-toe, snagged a thick tangle of exposed roots, pulled herself up —

The planks cracked, then crumbled under her.

With a yelp, Kris scrabbled, hung on, then held very still, gulping air and clinging to rock and earth by root, fingertips, and Scooby-Doo-sneaker-soles.

"You okay?" Joe, below her.

She only whimpered, scared to move, scared to _breathe. _It was a long way to the ground. It hadn't seemed that far at first, but now…

"C'mon, squirrel," Joe said cheerfully. "You made it up a tree in all that ice. That stuff's a piece of cake."

He just had to call her that; normally Kris only let Mar get away with it. Kris loved climbing trees. She felt safe in their branches, up where no one could touch her, no one could reach her, no one could hurt her, ever. But this was rock, root, and earth, not branches…

Didn't matter. She had to. She had to. Inching her feet around, she dug her feet in, finally got the foothold, then managed to grab the next rock, and the next, then another thick root…

Then she was scrambling over the edge of the shaft, into the mud and snow, and, soaked through and shivering, she lay there panting, staring back down at Joe's pale face. Shivering visibly, Frank had curled up behind him.

"Morton's farm," Joe called up, and pointed. "That way."

He sounded way too cheerful for someone who'd nearly been gobbled by a fairy monster. Kris considered a moment, then grabbed a handful of snow, dropped it down the hole; Joe yelped as the snowball nailed his head, but still grinned back up at her. Finally Kris pushed herself up, looked around. More light that way, a sense of space beyond the trees — probably the right direction. Out of the woods, anyway.

She took three steps, then stopped. White, snow-thick, featureless woods thick with identical barren trees. Joe had told her, he'd _told_ her, and she'd still nearly messed up.

The fairy queen had spoken to Joe in his head. It'd made him see his mom while Kris had seen hers. If that monster could do _that,_ then messing with a little abused runaway's mind to hide a snow-covered hole in the ground would be far too easy.

Mar's voice was a stern, Implacable-Indian-Warrior-faced memory. _Don't tell me you're going to let them get away with it._

_No._ Kris forced herself to turn back, to slice into the bark of the tree that grew right by the hole…then stopped again. Bright red-orange berries, sprawling branches — a hawthorne. A fairy tree.

Trembling, ignoring the persistent thought that the tree screamed in pain, Kris sliced into the bark and peeled down a good-size strip to leave a visible blaze. Then for good measure, she scrounged up dead branches, arranged them in arrows on the ground pointing towards the hole, and piled rocks on top of each branch. The exercise warmed her a little, but her hands were red, frozen, and stiff with cold by the time she finished. She blew on them, shoved them under her armpits, trying to warm them up.

"Kris?" Joe's voice floated up.

"Here," she said. "Marking the spot." Why wasn't Frank talking? He always took charge.

_I'll take you first._

No. _No._ Kris looked around. It was bright daylight; blue sky and thin white clouds glowed above the trees. Daylight, when it'd been stormy and dark just a bit ago. Kris swallowed hard, then headed in the direction Joe had pointed, the direction that had the most light and sense of space.

Every single tree, she stopped and sliced off a good chunk of bark and piled rocks and branches in arrows on the ground. Every. Single. One. Let that fairy monster try to pull something — it was up against Mar's Implacable Indian Warrior Face and Joe's Daniel-Boone-Indian-scout fantasies now.

Then Kris was stumbling from the edge of the woods and into the Morton's back yard, between the house and the barn. She could see a lot of cars and pickup trucks in the front yard, even from that angle. Kris didn't care. Frozen through, her legs rubbery with exhaustion, her head foggy and pounding, she staggered right up to the back door. She didn't bother knocking, only fumbled it open, tripped and fell flat on her face into the warm kitchen —

There'd been loud, angry talk going on, talk that shut up immediately, and Kris looked up into a circle of shocked adult faces. Mr. Hardy rose to his feet, his worn face now staring at her in open, unrestrained _hope._

Then Mar was there, wrapping Kris in a hug that squeezed all the air out in a breathless squeak…

…and finally, finally, Kris broke down, weeping.


	7. Rescue

**_A/N: Thank you, SnowPrincess88, Stork Hardy, Almega & TeamWhoeverHitBellaWithACar for the reviews - and again, all my readers rock! _ **

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Joe was scared.

Strike that. He was _terrified._

The boards had shattered under Kris, but she'd hung on, had made it over the edge and out. Joe heard her moving around up there; snow fell down the shaft from whatever she was doing, and he backed up…

…and nearly tripped over Frank.

Frank had curled up against the earth and stone, limp, his face flushed, his breath wheezing, labored. Joe knelt, shook him; his brother was hot to touch. "Frank?"

"'M'fine," Frank mumbled. "Just tired. Tired."

It didn't make sense. Frank had been okay earlier. He'd been okay all day. They hadn't been down here that long. Yeah, the fall had been real bad; Joe ached in every bone and limb, battered, bruised, and freezing his butt off on top of all that, and he really wanted a hot bath and his own warm bed right now, but…

_I'll take you first._

Joe bit his lip. "Kris?"

"Here." She sounded small, scared. "Marking the spot."

Okay. Better not freak her more. Panicking wouldn't do any good. All he could was wait. Shivering, Joe settled next to his brother, let Frank curl against him. Something in his Boy Scout's manual about that, hypothermia. Keeping the other person warm with your own heat. Though Frank was already warm, sweating despite the cold, and murmuring words that Joe couldn't make out.

"We're gonna get out of here," Joe murmured back. "Kris got out. She'll bring Dad." Then he yawned. No. He had to stay awake. He remembered that much. Falling asleep was bad in the cold. He couldn't…

Chittering startled Joe from the exhausted stupor he'd sunk into. Click. The little elf was shaking Joe's arm and bitten hand; his clicks sounded mournful.

"It's okay," Joe whispered. Cold. He was so cold. He couldn't stop shivering. "I know why you did it. Thank you." Then, desperate, despairing, "Will you help my brother?"

Those huge dark eyes stared at him, unblinking like a cat. Then Click placed one finger gently on Joe's mouth, then on his forehead, chittered again, and to Joe's shock, he heard one word, clear and understandable.

_Promise._

Click held its hand out, and Joe touched the long fingers — the touch turned into a grip, boy to elf. Warm. Dry. Leathery. "I won't tell," Joe said. "I promise. Just help him. _Please."_

The little elf stared at Joe with that wide unblinking gaze again, nodded — and froze, stared up, then fled down the tunnel. Before Joe could yell after him, someone called out, desperate, scared, longing.

"Frank? Joe?"

"_Dad!"_ Joe tried to scramble to his feet, couldn't. Too tired. Exhausted. Aching.

Voices argued somewhere at the top of the shaft: Dad angry and vehement, cut off by a deeper, louder voice. A rappelling line fell down the shaft, followed by a huge man in camouflage, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He hit the bottom, saw the two brothers huddled together. "Hey there, buddy," the man said as he disentangled himself from the line. He had a deep, furry voice. "What's wrong with your brother?"

Joe stared. "You're _black."_

The man paused, then slowly shook his head, sighed. "Sure am. Let's get a look at you two." He unwrapped two blankets from his pack, came over, knelt down, helped Joe into one blanket, then gently wrapped Frank in the other. "Corporal Clay Wilson, First Army Ranger Company, at your service, bud. Lemme guess. You're Joe."

The blanket helped some, but Joe's teeth still chattered. Nodding, Joe watched as the man examined his brother. The man had a hard-eyed look that suggested military. "You're a _Ranger?_ So was Uncle Jack. In Korea."

Clay paused. "Jack Kelly?"

Wide-eyed, Joe nodded again.

"Small world," Clay said; Frank didn't even stir as Clay checked for pulse, breath. "Jack was my sergeant. So the old SOB's your uncle, huh? No wonder you're both still alive. He's a tough old coot."

Uncle Jack was Mom's brother. At family get-togethers, he'd get drunk and tell all kinds of scary stories about night-raids during the Korean War. Mom's brother. This guy was from Uncle Jack's unit?

_Mom…!_

"I'm in search-and-rescue now," Clay was saying. Calm. Un-rushed. Un-panicked. He checked Frank's limbs, then gently pried Frank's eyelids open and shone a penlight in. "Trained EMT. I do volunteer work for the Appalachian Trail over in the Taconics. You know Mar?" At Joe's nod, "I work with her company." Clay sat back, frowning down at Frank, then eyed Joe. "Well, you're awake and talking. Anything feel broken?"

Joe shook his head.

"Okay. Sit tight. We'll get a carrier down here." Clay stood, shouted up the shaft, resulting in a flurry of movement and noise from up top.

"I can climb," Joe offered. He was exhausted, shivering, bruised, and sore, but he really wanted to try the rappel line. It looked _cool._

Clay laughed. "I bet you could. No, bud, you sit there. There's a whole lot of worried people up top, and they'd have my hide if I let you do that." Then he squatted back by Joe. "You've got quite a story to tell, I'll bet. You're lucky — it's Christmas Eve, so you didn't miss Santa Claus."

"Christmas _Eve?"_ That wasn't right. It was a whole _week_ before Christmas!

That earned Joe a sharp look. "You_ do_ have a story to tell. Be careful what you say up top, okay? The news crews are all out there. You've given 'em quite a story — dramatic rescue, Christmas miracle, all that jazz."

At that point, the carrier came down the shaft, a stretcher encased in metal ribs. Clay grabbed it, lifted Frank easily into it and strapped him in, then shouted up the shaft again.

For Joe, the best part wasn't the blinding sunlight (_sunlight? _It'd been nightfall and blizzard-ing when they'd fallen!) or the fresh air that smelled of nothing but cold and snow and burning wood…no. The best part, the absolute _best_ part was Dad grabbing both him and Frank into a long, tight, shaking, warm hug, Joe enfolded in one arm, Frank held against Dad's shoulder by the other…

The _only_ good part.

The day fell into a confusing, blurred mess of excited people, reporters, flashing camera lights, and cops asking questions. Dad and Mar finally, firmly, _loudly_ chased them all away when some of the more over-excitable reporters tried to follow Joe, Frank, and Kris back into the emergency ward. The news people made a big deal over "those heroic boys sacrificing themselves so the little girl could get out", but Joe couldn't understand why. It only made sense. Kris was smaller and lighter than him and Frank; the boards had been too weak to hold the brothers.

But Frank…

They wouldn't let Joe stay with him. The nurses and doctors insisted on putting Joe in a separate hospital room, in bed and under warmed blankets — not that Joe minded the blankets. There was a deep core of cold inside him that the warmth couldn't reach, and he couldn't stop shivering. They'd washed all the mud off, they'd stuck a very painful IV in his arm, and they'd scrubbed and swabbed every cut and scrape with sticky brown iodine and bandaged him until Joe was sure he looked like a mummy.

But then another doctor pulled Dad and Aunt Gertrude outside the room. That was too much; Joe crept out of bed to listen at the door. Complicated, confusing medical words…but _infection_ grabbed Joe's attention, as did _we're-doing-our-best._

That'd been what they'd said about Mom: they were doing their best.

"What's wrong with Frank?" Joe demanded, pulling the door open. Dad looked stricken, but Aunt Gertrude immediately took Joe by the shoulders and steered him back to the bed.

"You don't need to worry about that, young man," Aunt Gertrude said. "Right back under those blankets and go to sleep."

"Gert," Dad said tiredly, "let me talk to him."

Joe stared. Exactly what Dad had said right before he'd talked to Joe and Frank about Mom's illness. No. _No._

Dad shut the door, came over and sat down on the hospital bed, gathered Joe into another hug, holding him close. "Your brother's very sick," Dad said quietly; his voice burred through his chest. "Something in that cave got into his lungs. Some infection. Pneumonia's part of it."

_I'll take you first. _"I want to see him."

Dad's hug tightened. "They're still getting him settled in intensive care. He hasn't woken up yet."

"_I want to see my brother!"_

Dad squeezed Joe again, then firmly pushed him back into the bed. "Rest."

"_Dad…!"_

"I'll check with Dr. Bentley," Dad said gently, but firmly. "If he says okay, I'll take you in."

Joe settled. Once Dad made a promise, he kept it; Dad had never broken a promise to his sons, ever, even if he'd had to put off work or client meetings. _Promises are important,_ Dad said. _ If someone can't trust your promise, then they can't trust you. _ But at that point, a nurse came in, barely glanced at Joe, and injected something into the IV line…just as Joe yawned hugely.

"What was that?" Joe demanded, around another yawn.

"Antibiotics," the nurse said, soothing. "To make sure you don't get an infection. And something to help you sleep."

"I don't need it," Joe said, but he yawned again as cold dark waved through him…

He woke sometime later in a panic, not knowing where he was, why, or how. The room was all wrong, bright with white-tile and sunlight and painted with goofy-looking Sesame Street characters, the shapes all wrong, and the smells were weird: sharp bleach and stringent Pine-sol…

Hospital. Cave. _Frank._

"Joe?" Small, tentative. Kris was curled on the other bed, her own IV pole next to her. She was in a hospital gown, her arms and visible legs wrapped in bandages, but she also wore a fuzzy pink robe with bunny rabbits embroidered on it.

Okay. That wasn't right. She was a _girl._ Joe pulled the sheets up. "They put you in here with _me?"_

She shook her head. "I snuck in."

Joe couldn't argue with that. As small as she was, she was a good sneak. "You look like a bunny mummy," he informed her.

Kris wasn't looking at him, head bowed. She looked utterly miserable. "Joe, I'm sorry. I'm _sorry._ Because of me, you and Frank got hurt. And Frank's…" She gulped.

Joe opened his mouth, then stopped. Something Mom had said, the first and only time Joe had tried to blame Frank for something Joe had done, because he'd just been copying his older brother. _"You chose to do it," _Mom had said_. "You have your own brain. You're the only one to blame for what you do."_ Joe had gotten grounded _longer_ for trying to blame Frank.

Though that hadn't saved Frank from getting the _you-need-to-set-an-example-for-your-baby-brother_ speech, which had ended with Frank getting his revenge on Joe with water pistols that night.

Still… "You shouldn't've run," Joe said angrily. "You shouldn't've even been out there."

"I know," Kris said, still not looking at him. "Mar lectured me already." She hesitated. "I…I wanted Click to take _me._ That's why I ran."

Joe stared at her. "Take you where?"

"His home," Kris whispered. "But the queen didn't want me, either. She said I was ugly. That I was useless."

So that thing had thought _Joe_ was useful? For what? "You're not useless," Joe said, then re-thought that. "For a girl, anyway."

The door swung open; Mar looked in. Kris let out a panicked _eep_ of air and started to struggle off the bed, but Mar only said, "They're both in here" to someone outside and came in the room, followed by Clay…and Dad. "Sit, little squirrel," Mar ordered Kris. "We've got questions. And the two of you are going to answer."

Kris huddled around herself, pulling blankets up from the other bed to cover herself with; Joe only pulled his own blankets tighter. Dad _and_ Mar.

They were in trouble.

"Hey, buddy." Clay swung a chair around and sat down. "I said you had a story to tell. Now's the time to tell it. All of it."

…and with Clay there, _Mom…_

_I won't tell. I promise._ Joe had told Click that. He'd promised Kris he wouldn't tell. If he told, Click would get hurt. People would dig up that cave to try to find him. They'd destroy Click's home.

All the tales, all the warnings, said to never break a promise to a fairy. All the stories where folks did, it always ended _worse._ Promises were important.

"You three were gone a week." Dad sat down on the foot of Joe's bed. Calm. Even. "No food. No water. In freezing temperatures."

"It was only a couple hours," Joe protested. But everyone, _everyone_, had insisted it was Christmas Eve. He didn't understand that at all. "And we had cookies. Kris snuck them to us when Mrs. Morton wasn't looking."

Dad just looked at him.

Mar, though, looked hard at Kris, who'd gone back to staring at the sheets. "I can't tell," Kris whispered. "I _promised."_

"Who did you promise?" Dad said, but Kris didn't answer.

"Kris," Mar said, "what did I tell you about secrets?" Silence. "Answer me. What did I say?"

Kris swallowed. "That…that there were good secrets. And bad secrets. That good secrets made you happy. Bad secrets hurt people. That bad secrets should never be kept."

"You keep this secret," Mar said, "you're hurting Frank. You're hurting yourselves."

Joe stared, not understanding. Hurting Frank? _How?_

Mar didn't lie. Joe and Frank had discovered that. No matter what, no matter that they were kids, no matter how much the truth hurt, she never, ever lied. They'd even tested her with the whole Santa Claus thing, something that even Aunt Gertrude still tried to insist was real, even though Frank and Joe both knew Santa was Dad, after last year's sad, horrible Christmas, where Frank's desperate plan to trap Santa to force him to bring Mom back had gone rather…well…awkward. But Mar had given them a gentle explanation of myths and belief and how something could be real in the heart without being real in life.

Like Mom.

But the memory of the little wizened elf and his huge grin, so ecstatic over the cookies and fudge, shocking Joe out of that monster's spell…

…and Click's scared flight when the adults had shown up…

Telling the grown-ups — Joe _knew_ what would happen. They'd dig up Click's home. They'd try to find him. They'd pack him off to some zoo or science lab like a monkey and the adults wouldn't listen to Joe or Kris at all.

"You both keep saying you were only gone a couple hours," Dad said. "It's been a _week._ According to your friends, you went into the kitchen and never came out. We found the milk pitcher and a few tracks in the woods. And that was it."

"Y'know, Fenton," Clay said, "that's a point right there. They keep saying a couple hours. Way they're acting, they believe it. It's the truth."

Dad's face wiped of all expression. "Drugs."

"No!" Joe said. "There _wasn't._ We were just running and we didn't see the hole and we fell in."

"What were you running from?" Mar said.

Kris stared at him, her eyes pleading. Joe swallowed. He'd promised her, too. "Nothing." That much was the truth, at least.

"You were just running in the woods, without your coats, in a blizzard, for no reason," Dad said, looking steadily at Joe.

Joe bit back the automatic _Yes-sir_ before the words made it out. No. He was not going to lie to Dad. Ever. He dropped his gaze to stare at the sheets. Not saying anything wasn't lying. Not really.

"If you weren't running from something," Clay said, "that means you were running _to_ something. What were you chasing?"

Uh-oh. This guy was sharp. No wonder Mom had sent him. But now Joe looked at Kris, and sudden anger boiled over. No matter what Mom had said, it'd been Kris's fault. Frank was sick, Frank was hurt, because… "Me and Frank were chasing her. She was out there with that milk and she took off running when we caught her."

"Twenty years interrogating crooks," Dad muttered, "and I can't get a straight answer out of my own son. Joe…"

"We are not going to bounce this story back and forth between you two," Mar said at the same time. "Kris —"

"Fenton, Mar," Clay cut them both off. "A word, please." He pulled them out of the room.

Silence. Joe's hands clenched around the blankets. "You started this," Joe said to Kris. _"You_ explain why you were running."

"Click helped you." Kris wasn't looking at him. "He made you see that thing was a monster, not your mom. He _helped _you."

That cut. "He didn't help Frank. He didn't keep _his_ promise!"

"Maybe he can't." Now Kris looked up. "He's just a little brownie. Mar and your dad can't help Frank, either. You going to blame them, too?"

Ouch. "But that thing. It was _evil._ That means we're protecting it, too."

Before Kris could answer, the room door opened again, and Clay stood there. Grim. Stern.

"Both of you," he ordered, "come with me. Now."


	8. Into the Fire

**_A/N: Thanks to SnowPrincess88 & TeamWhoeverHitBellaWithACar for the reviews here, and to JD, rokia, & Robina over at HDA - all my readers rock! See what happens when you leave a review? You get noticed!_**

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Fenton Hardy saw it all through his baby boy's face, Joe's pain, exhaustion, fear. He'd never wanted his sons to get hurt. He owed them that. He owed _Laura_ that; he'd promised her that he'd keep both of their over-curious, over-persistent, and over-intelligent sons out of his business as long as he could, that he'd keep them safe, that he'd let them just be boys, just be kids.

But the world was never safe. Something had struck at his family, at three who'd just been at a Christmas party, who'd just been having fun in the snow.

Maybe it'd started as disobedience, children upset at being treated unfairly by the adults. But something had lured them away from the house. Someone had kidnapped them, had hidden them for over a week where no one — cops, trained search-and-rescue, bloodhounds, nothing — had been able to find them. Not until Kris had stumbled into the Morton's farmhouse, not until she'd led them back along a trail of blazed trees to a spot that Fenton _knew_ they'd searched before…

Now his firstborn, serious old-for-his-age Frank, lay in ICU under an oxygen tent, barely conscious, delirious with fever and struggling to breathe through the fluid and infection in his lungs. And his baby, gentle stubborn Joe, scared and battered and trapped in some ungodly promise, likely threatened silent with retribution — Fenton _knew_ it, knew it with a lifetime of cop intuition and detective work.

Fenton couldn't shake the persistent, paranoid feeling that it was aimed at the kids. God, no, let it have been aimed at Fenton himself — the thought that someone might've targeted children directly was horrifying. He clenched his fists. If he got his hands on whoever did this, on whoever hurt three children, his _sons…_

"Look," Clay said quietly, "you're their parents. You two need to keep their trust. Let's play this another way. Let me be the bad guy here."

"Good cop, bad cop," Fenton murmured. Mar stayed silent, arms crossed.

"Something like that," Clay said. "But all bad cop. Put the pressure on. Dr. Bentley okayed visitors for your older boy, right?"

"Yes," Fenton said, just as quietly. He thought he saw where Clay was going. The man was one of Mar's business associates from Boston, an experienced search-and-rescue veteran, an ex-Army Ranger. Fenton couldn't figure out why the man had stuck around. "They're children, Clay. Not North Koreans."

"They're old enough to know right from wrong," Clay said. "And to know what the consequences are."

"If someone's in that wood attacking kids," Mar said to Fenton, "we need to know it. We need to take care of it before it gets _more_ kids."

"We need to know what got used on your boy," Clay added.

"No argument there," Fenton sighed, running a hand through graying hair. Even more gray now. The doctors hadn't been hopeful on Frank's prognosis. His oldest. Fenton had been so proud, so happy when Frank had been born, Laura smiling through her exhaustion and relief, flushed with sweat and her hair tangled in knots around her face as she'd cradled her newborn son. Frank and Joe were all he had left of her. Her gift to him. Her legacy.

Fenton would take care of it, definitely. And very, very personally.

"Do it," he said to Clay. "Just don't hurt them."

Silence.

"Sorry," Fenton said, when the silence went on too long. Too harsh. Far too harsh. He'd seen how Clay had taken care of his boys in getting them out of that hole — the man had allowed Joe to ride piggy-back as Clay had rappelled up, to Joe's open delight. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just…"

"I know what you meant," Clay said. "It's okay."

Clay pushed open the room door. Fenton watched, listened, hanging back out of the way with Mar as Clay bullied both children out of bed and down the hall…and into Frank's room.

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No. _No._

Clay had bullied both Joe and Kris out of bed and down the hall to the children's ICU and right into Frank's room. Joe had begged to see his brother, had begged Dad to let him, but now…this…this was a punishment.

He'd never seen Frank so pale, nor heard Frank's breathing sound like that, nor seen so many tubes and wires, beeping monitors, a plastic mask and thick tube over Frank's face, plastic sheeting tented over the bed. Frank tossed restlessly…or tried. They'd velcro-strapped his right arm to the bed-rail; that arm had two IV tubes taped securely down, the skin around the IV's raw and red-looking.

Worse, Frank was whimpering. His brave, fearless older brother, _whimpering. _

Joe touched Frank's free hand, then gripped it when his brother didn't respond. There. Joe saw Frank's eyes open, just a little, and fix on Joe.

No recognition. Nothing.

"What's the matter?" Clay said. "Never seen anyone dying before?"

_Dying? _ Joe rounded, bumped into Kris, who'd come up behind him.

"Lemme lay it straight," Clay said. Hard. Cold. Arms crossed. Staring down at Joe and Kris as if they were bugs. "You three disappear for a week. You come back claiming it's only been a couple days. You're just suffering exhaustion and exposure, but _he's_ dying. Doctors can't figure out why. And you two won't talk because _you promised."_ Clay's gaze bored into Joe. "You're going to let your brother _die_ because _you promised."_

"_No!"_ Joe launched himself at Clay, only to be shoved back and down into the room's only chair. Joe landed hard, the chair skidding back and ramming against the wall — the motion yanked at the IV tube despite the layers of tape, and Joe gasped, bent over his arm.

Kris had gone completely still, face pale.

"And you," Clay said to her, "these boys think you're their friend. Spare me the tears, girlie. You're a cold-hearted little piece of work. Your so-called friend is _dying_ and you don't care one bit._"_

"Leave her alone," Joe snarled. All he could see was Kris trying to tell the truth to Mrs. Morton, shielding Click with her own body, attacking that thing in the cave as it'd reached for Joe…

"Look out, we got us a _gentleman, _here," Clay said. "Protecting your partner in crime, but you can't be bothered to help your dying _brother."_

Silence. Joe wiped at his face. He wasn't understanding. How could telling the whole unbelievable story help Frank?

"Welcome to the consequences." Clay leaned against the wall. Cold. Casual. "Something happened that's killing Frank. We don't know what, and you two are the only sources of information. You keep your mouths shut, Frank's going to die. Of course, Frank doesn't have any say in the matter. You two are choosing for him." Clay's gaze focused on Joe. "Wonder what he'd say about that?"

"You'll kill him," Kris spat. "You don't care about _that._ Grown-ups never do."

"Kill _who?"_

"There's someone else." Joe's voice trembled. He couldn't stop it, didn't even try. "He helped us. He helped us get out of there." He couldn't let his brother die. He _wouldn't._

"We tell," Kris said, "and you'll kill _him._ You'll destroy his home and drag him off to some lab and put him under a microscope like some bug —"

"You're making awfully big judgements, girl. You really think Mar would do something like that?" Clay waited, then, "Well?"

"No," Joe muttered, half a beat behind Kris.

Clay crouched down in front of Joe. "And your dad. You think he'd hurt someone who helped his sons? He's out there right now, tearing his heart out because Frank's dying and you're not talking."

Joe still hesitated, looking at Frank. His best friend. His brother.

_Promises are important._

"Fine." Clay pushed to his feet. "Back to your rooms, then." He pulled Joe up, shoved him over by Frank's bedside. "Say goodbye. Your brother won't last the night."

It wasn't fair. It wasn't. Joe looked down; Frank now lay still, didn't even stir when Joe gripped his hand again. Frank's hand felt fragile, too thin. "I…"

"Great Christmas present to give your dad," Clay said, watching Joe intently. "Your brother, dead. On Christmas Eve, too."

"Joe…" Kris said, small, scared.

Joe rounded on her. _"It's not your brother dying!"_

Kris recoiled.

"Frank's my brother," Joe snarled, through thick, hot tears. She was a runaway, adopted; she didn't have a real family. "My _brother._ You even know what that means? You even _care?"_

"Frank wouldn't want someone innocent hurt," Kris said, trembling.

Maybe Click was innocent, but that monster wasn't. There had to be a way. Joe turned back, glaring at Clay. _"You _have to promise. You have to promise not to hurt someone. You have to promise to help him, too."

Clay snorted. "I'm not promising anything. Not until I hear the whole story."

"You want us to trust you," Joe said. "Then you gotta trust us."

Silence.

"That important, huh?" Clay said quietly. "Okay. With one caveat. I'll only promise that if he had _nothing_ to do with hurting you three. But if he's really innocent, I'll do everything I can to protect him. Deal?"

"Deal," Joe whispered, his other hand gripping Frank's so tight it hurt, and he saw Kris bow her head and nod, wiping at her face.

There had to be a way. There had to be. No matter what, Joe would find it…


	9. Ironbound

**_A/N: Thanks to Stork Hardy, TeamWhoeverHitBellaWithACar, & StormPrincess88 here & to JD, rokia, & Robina on the HDA for reviews! All my readers rock!_**

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Clay had called them both in, and Fenton had listened. Fenton had held his silence. It wasn't easy. If it hadn't been his son…if it hadn't been _Joe_ holding Frank's hand in a grip so tight that both boys' hands were bloodless-white, Joe whispering the tale with Kris nodding and backing him up…Fenton would've called anyone else delusional. Children making things up. Lying.

Both children were white-faced and trembling with exhaustion by the time they were done. Fenton went over to them — Kris shied away before he could give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze — and he looked down at Joe, his baby, his youngest. Never mind Joe was eleven. He would always be Fenton's baby boy.

"It's the truth, Dad." Joe glared up, defiant, openly scared. "I'm telling the truth."

"I know." Fenton gathered his son into another tight hug. "You're my son. My son doesn't lie."

Here in front of all these others, Joe tried to squirm away. _"Dad…" _

"I taught you," Fenton murmured into his son's hair. "I taught both you and your brother how to see." _I-Spy_ games, memory games, _watch-think-remember_ games that had gotten hysterically fierce with the sibling rivalry. Fenton held Joe out, just enough to look his baby son in the face. His eleven-year-old, stubborn, impulsive, gentle baby son. "If I don't trust _your_ powers of observation, then who can I trust?"

"I'll get them back to their rooms," Clay said. "Nurses won't bother me."

A fierce-looking giant in camouflage. No, Fenton wouldn't bother him either, no matter that Fenton had seen the man get into a snowball fight with his sons' friends to keep them out of the way of the search teams; Chet, Phil, and all the others kept insisting on helping, but none of the adults had wanted more kids lost. But Clay had extricated himself from that snow-chaos and _then_ came up to the rest of the grim-faced search team with far more information about what had happened than they'd been able to get out of the kids at that point.

Clay left the room, leaving Fenton and Mar alone in the room with Frank lying pale and still under oxygen tent, mask, tubes and wires. Fenton turned, and surprised a look on Mar's face that he hadn't expected.

Appraising. Weighing.

"You believe them, too," Fenton said.

The "too" caught her. Whatever Mar had been expecting, it hadn't been that; Fenton was sure of it. "You meant what you told Joe," Mar said.

"I don't lie to my sons," Fenton said, then amended that. "Well, as long as it doesn't involve national security." Though Frank and Joe had figured that much out, too. Two over-curious boys hyper-excited over their father being involved in 'top-secret spy stuff'…but to Fenton's shock, both kept their mouths shut. Fenton looked down at his oldest, at Frank, squeezed his boy's free hand. He thought he felt a response, a small twitch. Maybe.

Mar's mouth twitched. "Understandable."

"So we've got a problem," Fenton said. "People masquerading as fairies —"

"The Sidhe," Mar said quietly. "Fairies are those silly Victorian things. These are full-blown Sidhe."

The Sidhe. The People of the Mound. The Fair Folk. His mother, Laura's mother: both had told those tales to him, to Laura, to the kids. Fenton didn't mind. The stories were good blood-chilling lessons that the world wasn't safe, to be careful what you say and how you deal with people, no matter what they looked like.

Though Fenton's mother had given up telling them to Frank: Frank was at the age of _everything-has-to-make-sense,_ and he drove both grandmothers crazy with his questions_. _ Fenton was now careful to keep Frank occupied whenever the grandmothers started story-telling, otherwise the stories degenerated into argument_._ His common-sensical, scarily-intelligent firstborn…

But then Fenton realized exactly what Mar had said. "You're saying they're real." Mar was too solid, too grounded, too everyday-normal-real, to believe in a children's fantasy without good cause.

Somehow, it wasn't a shock.

"Either they're real," Mar said, "or we're looking at someone who can mimic two people at the same time, who used drugs to mess up the kids' sense of time — drugs that don't show on tox screens, mind — and who's infected your son with something that none of the doctors can figure out."

"Not to mention an elf that likes fudge," Fenton said. He looked back down at Frank, wondered what his _everything-has-to-make-sense_ firstborn's face had looked like when he'd seen that.

Then Fenton had to smile, if only to himself. He could well imagine it.

"You're accepting this way too calmly," Mar said. Still calm. Even. Unperturbed.

"Do I have a choice?" Fenton said. _When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth_ — Arthur Conan Doyle had said that. Doyle, who'd also believed in fairies, who'd written the Sherlock stories that both Fenton's sons loved, that Fenton had read to them when they were small…

Now Mar cracked a smile, but no humor behind it. "There's always a choice."

"I prefer solving the problem." Preferably with his service pistol, but no need to say that out loud. Yet. "So it attacked Frank because he got in the way. Because it wanted Joe." Fenton thought back over those old stories, those old, gruesome, fairy stories. "Fairies — the Sidhe. They snatch kids. I remember that much from Mama's tales. But why Joe? Why _just_ Joe? It could've had all three, easily. Kris _wanted_ it to take her."

Fenton had wanted to gather the little runaway into his own hug when she'd admitted that. But he hadn't; she was still gun-shy of men. That _any_ child had been so abused, so broken, that she'd thought no one wanted her, that she'd wanted monsters to take her…

For a moment, Mar looked away. "After this is over, I will hand you a baseball bat and you can beat those parents of hers for me."

"Not you?"

"I wouldn't stop." Mar looked back, tranquil on the surface, but then Fenton took a good look at her eyes…and shuddered. "But I think you know '_why Joe'._"

He did. Damn her, he did. "Laura. Their mother. Her family's old-country Irish. Descended from ancient Irish kings, according to Ma Kelly." Sweet, stubborn Laura, sweet only until you looked in her eyes, eyes that would look right through you, eyes that _knew _you. "She claimed Joe has the Sight." He looked up, saw Mar's expression. "Seeing ghosts, goblins, things that go bump in the night. That kind of thing."

"I know," Mar said.

There'd been federal agents claiming other things, who'd wanted to take Joe away shortly after Laura had died. Fenton had threatened them with his own _special_ retribution if they tried to touch either of his sons, and those agents had backed off fast. But Mar didn't need to know that.

The door opened; Clay slipped back in. "If your boy is anything like you," Clay said to Fenton, "then God help me if I ever do anything to anyone that requires a PI getting on my case."

Fenton managed to smile.

"My people also had problems with the Sidhe," Mar said. Still quiet. Still calm. As if Clay hadn't interrupted. "Though on a somewhat lesser scale than you Europeans. But they stole our kids, too. The gifted ones, in more ways than one."

Interesting, but not pertinent. Fenton turned back to Frank, picked his oldest boy's hand up in his own. So still. So fragile under Fenton's rough, callused hands. "You haven't answered my question. About solving the problem."

Out of the corner of his eye, Fenton saw Mar and Clay exchange a long look. Interesting.

Clay came over to stand by the bed. "Mar, look. Think. Aluminum frame, no problem there. But you said they had a hard time getting those IVs in."

"Massive understatement," Fenton said.

"_Steel_ needles," Clay said.

Fenton paused. Something he hadn't understood at the time. Neither boy liked needles, but Frank was usually stoic to the point that nearby adults had to stifle laughter: the serious, brave older boy trying to reassure his little brother that something really didn't hurt…not that Joe ever believed him. "They had to sedate him," Fenton said.

Another of those long looks between Mar and Clay. Then Clay pulled something from his jacket and pressed it against Frank's exposed arm.

Frank jerked, cried out — and before Fenton could _strangle_ the man who'd just hurt his dying boy, Clay pushed the something into Fenton's hand.

Fenton stared. A horseshoe.

An _iron_ horseshoe.

Clay's voice was grim. "This isn't your son."


	10. Escape

**_A/N: Thank you, Stork Hardy, TeamWhoeverHitBellaWithACar, and LaurenHardy13 for the reviews! As always, all my readers rock!_**

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The light had fled, cold dark had enveloped them in a freezing slap, and _something_ had jarred Frank from behind, hard enough that he'd fumbled and dropped the jackknife…

Then the _something_ had wrapped long wiry arms around him, damp stinking hands around his mouth and cold slimy cloth over his head, muffling all sound, all yells, all struggles. Frank kicked, twisted, bit, fought back with every last trick he'd learned against school bullies. _Someone grabs you,_ Dad had told him and Joe, _your only goal is to get away. No matter what. _

Too strong. Too wiry. Too determined. Frank had been silenced and dragged…somewhere. He didn't know where. Shaking fog from his head, he'd woken up on cold stone, surrounded in crystalline light. He couldn't see Joe or Kris anywhere.

Memory returned, slow, hazy. Mom had been there, but when Frank had pulled his knife, she hadn't been. It'd been a trick. It'd been that thing. Somehow. Someway. And it'd wanted his brother. It'd wanted _Joe._

"He will be useful." Hard. Cold. Silvery, like a hand caressing wind chimes. The sound thrilled against Frank's ear. "Very useful."

Whispery moaning answered that. The air stirred, bringing the stink of lilies, tobacco, and rotted meat.

Frank struggled to his elbows, froze. Something hunched there, a few feet away, draped in dirty, gray, loose-woven shrouds that dragged at the earth and rock. The only part visible were long skinny hands, blue-skinned and rotting.

But standing over it…

Tall. Graceful. Beautiful. Surrounded in light.

"You're awake." Suddenly that hard voice was all gentle sweetness. "Poor dear child. Sweet little one. No need to be so frightened."

Frank pressed back against the stone: glittering white, carved in swirls and patterns, glowing deep within. The only way out was blocked by the stinking gray thing and the tall graceful light; he couldn't see past them. "What's wrong with him?"

Silence.

"It looks like leprosy." Frank edged around the stone. That'd been last month's _National Geographic_, one of the leper colonies in India. "You should get him to a doctor. They can cure it now." Keep chattering. Keep talking. Keep them distracted...

Another, longer pause. The expression on that beautiful face in the light reminded Frank too much of Gramma Hardy, whenever Frank started asking too many questions.

Just like Gramma, it evidently decided to ignore the question and opt for quick distraction. "You must be hungry." She stepped aside, slender, graceful, gracious movement. "Here."

A low flat stone, covered in white and set with stuff that smelled _good._ Small white cakes topped with cherries. Thick steaming soup loaded with barley and noodles. Bright red apples. Bread dripping with butter. Frank's mouth watered and his stomach growled, reminding him that lunch had been a long time ago. Too long.

A quiet chitter caught his attention. Behind the tall glowing grace — Click. The little elf pointed at the table and quickly shook his head, but shrank back when the elegant form turned to stare down at him.

"There you are," the being said to Click. "You've been naughty, little _sídheog_. Luring those poor children into that cold nasty cave."

Frank scowled. "He didn't lure us. We _fell." _ Kris had gotten scared when he'd grabbed her, she'd run off, and he and Joe only wanted to stop her before she got hurt in the woods. That was all. Frank should've known better than to grab her like that. Dad had explained about Kris's original parents shortly after the Mountainhawks had moved in — though for Frank, it'd taken reading scary, sickening case-studies at the library before he'd believed it.

Click shrunk back even further, and the tall graceful woman turned back to Frank, as if she hadn't heard. "Eat, dear child."

Her words and tone grated. She sounded like Great-aunt Rose, who stank of lavender and baby powder and who was always trying to hug and kiss "all my darling little nieces and nephews". Frank wasn't _little._ He was _twelve_.

Once more, Click pointed at the table and frantically shook his head.

Clear enough. Frank wasn't about to take the chance. "I'm not hungry, ma'am," he said politely. "But thank you."

He didn't know who the woman was or why she wanted him or Joe, but it couldn't be good. It all felt like one of Gramma Hardy's stories; she'd gotten angry with Frank when he kept asking questions about them, but none of them had made _sense._ They _still_ didn't make sense. Why did this woman want them?

"Of course you're hungry, child." The gentle voice hardened again. "Children are always hungry." Suddenly she was back to sweetness and light. "It's perfectly safe. See?" She plucked a piece of bread from the table and broke it in two — steaming, fresh, dripping with butter, hot yeasty smell — and devoured half, licking the butter off her fingers before offering the other half to Frank.

Why was she trying to make him eat? Frank scowled again, Dad's warnings about never taking gifts from strangers ringing in his head. "No, thank you."

She drew herself up, all sweetness, all gentleness gone. "You refuse my hospitality?"

"No, ma'am," Frank said. Whatever this woman wanted, she was definitely nuts. She'd kidnapped him, and she expected him to _trust_ her? "I just want to go home."

This time she smiled, showing far too many teeth. "You cannot. You trespassed on my realm. You interfered with my bargain. You threatened with _iarann cuar, _here, where none such may be_. _You have thus broken our law and placed yourself in our debt._" _She spoke precisely, enunciating each word.

"You're the one breaking the law," Frank said. "This isn't your land. It's the Mortons' farm. And kidnapping's illegal."

"You are a singularly stupid child. I ask again. Are you refusing my hospitality?"

That didn't sound good. Frank didn't answer. Behind the woman, Click watched him, the little elf's head cocked, its forehead scrunched, as if thinking.

"Silence is not an answer," the woman said.

"I plead the Fifth." That always sounded cool when the guys on _Dragnet_ used it, especially after Dad had explained what it meant.

The woman regarded Frank for a moment. "Of what magic is that law?"

"_You're_ stupid," Frank said. She didn't know _that?_ "That's in the Constitution. Of the United States."

"Human law." Scornful. Dismissive.

"Everyone's law," Frank countered. "We all agreed to it. You live here, so you have to follow it. Everyone does."

"I am not everyone." The woman turned away, and Frank saw other tall, shining figures behind her. "You refuse my hospitality. Therefore, you are only useful as I deem fit. Take it away."

That didn't sound good. She was starting to remind him of Aunt Gertrude whenever Dad used up the last scoop of coffee without buying more. But Frank was certain that this crazy woman didn't mean anything like Aunt Gertrude's chores. "I want to go home."

"I'm certain you do." The woman gestured at the others, and two of the shining figures advanced on Frank. "But you've lost your chance for bargaining."

Frank shrank back. The two newcomers were in weird green and silver clothes that looked like the costumes that the Bayport Players had used in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ in the park. Frank had _hated_ that play; everyone in it had acted stupidly, to his mind.

He wasn't about to stand here and let them grab him. Frank charged, ducked, and twisted out of their hands when they grabbed him, got past them and the crazy woman and into…

…wide open space, dark with night. Fields overgrown with tall spring grass. Silvery moonlight. Massive trees laden with flowers and fruit. No time to think about the impossibility — Frank simply fled down the hill, skidded on loose stone, slid the rest of the way in a slurry of rock and earth, ended face down at the base of a trio of silver-leafed trees with skinned hands and aching ankle.

Yells above him. Grim, determined, angry figures strode down the hill.

A shrill whistle caught Frank's attention — Click beckoned frantically, just barely in sight deep in the greenwood, and Frank ran after him, dodging through trees and rocks, tripping over vines and roots. None of this made sense. It was winter. There had been a couple feet of snow on the ground. It was only a week before Christmas!

Suddenly Click yanked on Frank's hand, towards a closely-woven trio of trees; the little elf squirreled up the closest, pointing and gesturing to the middle. Frank didn't hesitate. He squeezed past the trunks, stepped onto a tangled clump of leaves —

— it fell away under him.

Frank hit the bottom with a muffled yelp, then barely bit down on another yelp as long-fingered hands touched his face, patting his mouth — Click. Click kept touching Frank's mouth, pressing on his lips, until Frank nodded his understanding. Shivering, stifling his panting, Frank huddled in the dark, surrounded in roots and earth. Shouts and noise echoed above him, went past, faded.

Then, only then, Frank relaxed, just a little. Just enough for all the aches and scrapes and bruises to catch up and start hurting again. Just enough for the tears and fright he'd been holding off to also catch up, and Frank muffled his head in his arms, fighting to stay quiet.

Gentle patting on his shoulder.

"I'm okay," Frank whispered, wiping at his face. There was just enough light to see Click's face: huge dark worried eyes, downturned mouth. "I'm okay."

He had to be, if he was going to get out of this — but Frank had no idea where he was. None of this was possible, none of it, the woman, the monster, Mom, these woods, the little elf patting his shoulder. It was all Mom's and Gramma's stories, all the tales that Frank had scorned as _doesn't-make-sense…_

Frank wiped at his face again. Impossible or not, it all existed. It was here, in front of him, hard and undeniable, and crying wasn't going to change that.

Joe and Kris had to know he was missing. They had to be bringing help. They had to be.

"Here." A soft squeaky little voice. Click pressed something soft into Frank's hand. "Eat, please."

Frank gaped in shock. "You talk!" Then he bit his lip; that had sounded really rude. "Sorry…I mean…I mean you speak English."

"Eat," Click said again. "Please eat."

Frank looked. One of the cookies that Joe had given the little elf, the Christmas tree one. "We gave these to you."

Click nodded. "Safe. You gave freely. Makes mine. I offer freely. Eat, _please."_

Shaking, hurting, starved, Frank nibbled slowly, chewing, trying to make the cookie last. But it was still gone far too quickly.

"My hospitality," Click said, when Frank finished. _"My _protection, now. Pine tree, sacred tree, chieftain tree. Tree of light, everlasting green. No despair when near. Marks the mighty warriors, the great chiefs, the powerful lords."

That made no sense, but the _my-protection_ part was clear enough. "Why?"

Those great dark eyes looked at him. "Beware questions," Click said finally. "I know only curious. Others not so forgiving."

Frank looked away. "Sorry."

Click patted his arm. "No sorry. How else learn? Brother asked help. Asked protect you. You and he give freely. Give royal food to lowly little _bodach_. Girl-child give full milk cream. All three brave to face down queen." He grinned, another of those infectious, face-splitting grins. "My home, here you understand talk. Human land, not understand."

It was tangled, but Frank thought he understood. He didn't feel brave, just scared, tired, bruised and sore all over. Frank wanted a bath. He wanted to curl up in front of the fireplace with a blanket and a pile of beanbags. He wanted to hug Dad, to nail Joe with a snowball. One of Aunt Gertrude's cheeseburgers.

"You're not lowly," Frank whispered. "You…you're a knight. You're more royal than _she_ is."

Soft _hoot-hoots_ of laughter. "Knight? Knight? Mighty warrior indeed, to name lowly _bodach_ knight."

The thought of this little elf in a huge knight's helm — it finally made Frank smile.

"Smile good." Click patted Frank's arm again. "Keep thought on home. Keep bravery." Then the little elf shook Frank's arm, hard, emphatic. _"Eat no food here._ Ties you here. Makes you forget. Never return."

Frank filed that away mentally. "Are Joe and Kris okay? Did they get out?"

Click nodded. "Changeling helped escape. Queen angry. Make die moon-high."

Frank didn't want to ask. Click had gotten himself into enough trouble for Frank already. But Frank couldn't see any other option. "Can you help me escape?"

Again, that long, somber gaze. "Just little me. No power great door. Only self-crossing."

It sounded like a no. Frank buried his head in his arms again. Crying was for babies. Crying was for kids. But quiet tears leaked out anyway.

Another gentle touch. "Sleep," Click said gently. "My hidey-hole. Don't leave. Queen not find. Safe. Make water back there, if need. Sssss, ssss, ssss." The sound and Click's gesture made the meaning rudely clear, and Frank muffled laughter in his hands. Click grinned back. "Laugh good. Return later. Stay." He started to climb out, towards the woods.

"Where are you going?" Frank wasn't going to panic. He wasn't. But being left alone here…

"Help escape." Click gripped Frank's dirty hand in his own long-fingered one. "Get help. Promise."

Then he was gone.


	11. Impulses

**_A/N: Thank you, Leyapearl, SnowPrincess88, Stork Hardy, & LaurenHardy13 for the reviews! Again, all my readers are great - you folks are making my day, in the middle of some tough times._ **

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If they thought for one second that Joe would just leave it at that…

Taken back to the hospital room. Put back into bed. Ordered to "rest". As if Joe could really rest, as if he could just sit here, with Frank _dying._

Joe squeezed his eyes shut. _No._ He couldn't leave it at that. He couldn't let his brother die. Not without Joe doing something, _anything._

_When you do something wrong, you make it right,_ Kris had said. _You've got your own brain,_ Mom had said, _you're the only one to blame for what you do._

Joe studied the IV line. _Just a small catheter,_ the nurse had said when Joe asked how they kept the needle from tearing his vein, his usual flood of questions over anything new, anything interesting. She'd explained a lot, and fascinated, Joe had watched; it'd hurt going in, but now it was just taped there, and he'd been warned to be careful of that arm. The whole process had looked simple enough.

Decision made.

He picked at the tape, carefully peeled it off, then grit his teeth, pulled at the IV, straight back. It hurt…then it _really _hurt, but it slid out with a squirt of blood, and Joe clamped down on his arm, counted to sixty three times, then peeked to make sure the bleeding had stopped. Done.

Aunt Gertrude had brought clean clothes earlier; the nurses had said that Joe could probably go home tomorrow. Christmas. Joe wasn't going to wait that long. Keeping a wary eye on the door, Joe dressed quickly, pulled on his coat, then cracked the door open. No one in sight. Luckily his room was in the back corner, out of immediate sight of the nurses' station. Joe dodged out and over to Kris's room, paused, listened at her door, then slipped in.

Kris startled up. "Joe?"

"I need your help." Joe dropped onto the foot of her bed. "You knew about Click. You gave him milk. You could talk to him. You kept saying something about rules. That means you know stuff about fairies. Click's an elf. Right?"

She looked down at the sheets. "A brownie. Elves are big like us."

Joe ignored that. "Frank's dying. I'm not going to just sit here. _I'm going to get them."_

For a long moment, Kris didn't answer. Then her hands clenched around the sheets. "Me too. You're taking me with you."

Joe opened his mouth to say _no way_ — he could hear what Dad would say.

No, forget Dad, _Mar_ would scalp him.

"How'd you get this thing out?" Kris held her IV'd arm out.

"_No," _Joe said fiercely. "It's my job. _ Mine. _ Not yours. You got us _into_ this."

"That's why I'm going. To help you get _out_!"

"_No!"_

She settled back in her bed. Arms crossed. Glaring. "Then I'm not talking."

Okay. He'd figure it out on his own then. Joe slid from the bed.

"You go, and I'll yell! They'll lock you in your room, and then Frank'll die, and it'll be all your fault because you're too stupid to take me with you!"

"_Kris!"_

"Frank's dying because of me,"Kris said, just as fierce. "Don't you _dare_ leave me behind. Don't you _dare."_

Silence.

Kris held her arm out again. Waiting.

Jaw clenched, Joe gave in; he'd let her tag along for now. Just until they got home. Joe helped her pick at the tape; she didn't even flinch when he pulled the IV straight out, though she did bend over her arm, shivering. He turned his back, keeping a guard post at the door and listening for Mar and Dad as Kris got dressed.

"It's still bleeding a little," Kris said.

"We'll get a band-aid at home." Together they slipped out of the room.

Taking the elevator was out. Too many adults would stop and question a pair of kids by themselves. Joe took a deep breath, pushed open the stairwell door, and they ran down the stairs, made it to the lobby and out the front doors.

Luckily the Hardys' and Mountainhawk homes weren't that far from the hospital, close enough to cut through backyards and avoid the way-too-visible roads…though getting to Chet's house would be another matter. Joe fidgeted on Kris's front porch, eyeing his own front door. Aunt Gertrude was home; her car was in the driveway. If she spotted them…

"C'mon," Kris said.

Joe blinked as Kris pushed open her front door — Mar left it unlocked? He followed Kris in, careful to wipe his sneakers on the mat. Mar was already going to scalp him for getting Kris involved. Leaving wet sneaker prints all over her carpet would be a definite death sentence.

"Here." Kris dug into her pockets, then handed him Frank's jackknife. "Fairies hate iron."

"You had me touch it," Joe said, realizing.

Kris nodded. He followed her back to the kitchen, where she rooted around in the lower cabinets. "Your grandma tells all those cool stories," she said. "Don't you listen?"

"Well, no, they're just…" Then Joe stopped. No, not just kid stories. Not anymore. Think. He had to think. He had to remember those stories. Gramma Kelly's especially, even though she spent most of her storytelling trying to cuddle Joe like a baby — he was the youngest of all the grandkids — her stories were always about 'the fair folk' of the old country. "Something about wood. Some special wood."

"Ash." Kris straightened, dragging a pan out with her. Mar's humungous cast iron skillet. It was almost too big for Kris to hold. "Rowan. It protects against fairy magic."

Joe snapped his fingers. "My bat! Baseball bats are made of ash." Then he bit his lip. Sneaking past Aunt Gertrude — he and Frank had never managed that.

Kris cocked her head. "Where is it?"

"With Fred." Fred, the monster in his and Frank's closet. Joe had 'killed' it with his bat when he was little, his special souvenir Red Sox bat that Dad had gotten for Joe the first time that Dad had taken the brothers to Fenway Park, the bat that Carl Yastrzemski had personally autographed. Big, red-fake-furred and googly-eyed goofy, Fred-the-tamed-monster now sat next to Joe's bed, Hawaiian lei, sunglasses, and all. "But Aunt Gertrude's home…"

"I'll get it." Before Joe could stop her, Kris ran out the front door, leaving the skillet on the floor at his feet.

Great. The little tagalong would get them discovered and blow the plan before Joe ever had a chance. Might as well get band-aids before everything went down the drain. Joe clumped upstairs and had just found the box when the front door slammed and Kris appeared in the bathroom doorway, handed him the bat.

Joe stared. _"How…?" _ She'd gotten by _Aunt Gertrude? _

"Your aunt's busy cooking." Kris handed him a brown-bag packet that had Joe's name written on it and a satiny green bow taped to the flap. "Cookies. Those ones with the powdered sugar." She looked away. "There was a bag there for Frank, too."

Joe swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. Mom had made those every Christmas Eve; Aunt Gertrude had taken that over. Frank would get his share. Joe would make sure of it.

But Kris had gotten into the kitchen while Aunt Gertrude was there and had stolen _cookies?_ The special Christmas cookies? "You," Joe said fervently, "are Moriarty. The Saint. Alexander Mundy. All them rolled up."

Kris only picked up the box of band-aids. Joe watched, curious; she hadn't reacted at all to the names. Maybe she didn't know those stories. But then she rolled her sleeve back, peeling one of the band-aid papers apart.

"Wow." Joe stared. Where the IV had been was now a huge bruise covering her whole forearm, black and blue with yellow around the edges.

She shrugged, pressing the band-aid onto the IV spot. "No big deal."

No big deal? A bruise _that_ big? Joe opened his mouth, then decided he didn't want to know. "C'mon. Before Dad finds we're gone."

Scrambling over fences, cutting through backyards — they left a wide, obvious trail of footprints behind them. All the other kids out playing would disguise that, but Joe was dreading getting out to the road. They had to, to get to the Mortons' farm. There was another farm between Bayport town limits and the Mortons, and that farmer was notoriously trigger-happy with a rock-salt-loaded shotgun.

It'd been too long by this point, long enough for Dad to find them gone. Dad would definitely figure out where they were going. All it would take would be one phone call, and Mr. Morton would let loose the big dopey sheep dog and the way-too-smart border collies. The border collies, especially — Mrs. Morton had used one of those collies to tend Frank, Joe, and Chet when they were little, when Dad and Mom had asked her to babysit. It'd been _embarrassing._

Joe and Kris waited in the trees, watching the traffic. Nothing recognizable, and finally they scrambled onto the road and started out towards Morton farm, Kris with the iron skillet, flashlight, and cookies securely in her backpack, along with a loaf of wheat bread and a jar of Mar's homemade peanut butter — if they ended up gone another week, they'd need food — and Joe with the bat slung over his shoulder. The sun turned the snow-covered fields and trees into a blinding glory of sparkling white and glittering ice; the breeze nipped at their exposed faces. Every passing car, every sound, had Joe turning, looking, expecting Dad to cut them off and drag them back…

They finally reached the edge of the Morton farm. No dogs that Joe could see. No cars, either, not even Mr. Morton's battered Ford pickup. All the Christmas lights were on, and the Nativity scene was out, hand-made by Chet's granddad before WW II. It was old, fading paint and crudely carved out of oak and maple, but Joe loved it: the age made it solid. Real. Holy.

Joe touched one of the wooden sheep; Chet's unauthorized attempt to retouch the paint last year had given it eyes like Cookie Monster. "There's something about fairies and baptized babies. Maybe a cross?"

"That's vampires," Kris said. "And baptized didn't stop her from hurting Frank."

The monster had said something about _stinking-of-his-kingdom_, but Kris had a point. Maybe something else, then. Joe studied the baby Jesus. If only they had some magic to make it seem like a real baby to trade it to that monster for Frank's life. If only. Then Joe shook his head. _If-onlies_ never solved anything. Dad always said that.

Wait…

Tugging her after him, Joe carefully skirted the house and then dashed towards the barn. Still no one in sight, even as Joe opened the creaky barn door.

The Mortons were slowly replacing their livestock fencing; the ancient wooden fence was too rotted to keep up. Mr. Morton had opted for steel, but Mrs. Morton had insisted on decorative cast ironwork for the parts closest to the house. That part hadn't worked so well and the fencing company had refused to take the fancy work back, so the spiky black iron poles now were piled in the barn.

Joe hefted one up. Heavy, but wield-able. Anything to help Frank. Anything to force that fairy monster to undo whatever it did. If fairies hated iron, then Joe wanted a _nuke._

"Cold iron," Kris said. She tried to pick one up, couldn't.

"Hang onto this." Joe handed her his bat; he needed both hands to carry the pole.

The yard and woods were a morass of churned-up snow and earth, all the snow trampled down by hordes of boot- and dog-prints, and candy wrappers and styrofoam cups littered the woods. They almost didn't need Kris's tree blazes to find the hole, though Joe couldn't help grinning. Her blazes were _huge, _raw livid things, and Kris had also piled up rocks and twig-arrows at the base of each tree. The hole itself had a half-dozen twig arrows pointing around it, each laden with rocks.

"Okay, fairies," Joe muttered, "you're up against the Monster-Killer and the Queen of Thieves now. You're in _trouble." _He scowled, studying the hole, the ground. It was an awfully long drop.

"Hawthorne," Kris whispered. "The fairy tree."

Maybe they didn't need to go down the hole, then. Glaring at the tree, Joe set the point of the spiky iron against the trunk.

Kris grabbed his arm. "Don't! The tree can't help it that fairies like it. And it's marking the spot so we can find it. It's _helping_ us." She dropped her gaze. "It hates me because I cut it. Don't get it hating you, too."

Joe paused. Little elves, fairy monsters that looked like Mom, and now hating trees…but that was in Gramma Kelly's stories, too, to always be polite, to never turn away help, no matter how small. No matter what it looked like.

The tree's berry-laden twigs shook harder than the breeze accounted for. Joe took the pole away, and the trembling slowly stopped. "Do things like this always happen around you?"

Small, hesitant. "My parents said it was because of the devil."

"That's stupid," Joe informed her. "You just need a couple big brothers to keep you out of trouble." Granted, _this_ didn't count as keeping out of trouble…

Then Joe spotted it. Half-hidden in the snow, a rope was tied around the base of the tree and led down into the hole. Someone else was here?

Left behind by their rescuers, probably. Just more trash.

Useful trash, though. Joe tossed the iron pole down, then swung over the edge, hanging onto the rope and feeling out the toe-holds. Cold wet roots, slippery rocks, rough earth. The rope had knots tied into it at various intervals, but it was still a nervous, slippery descent.

Kris, though, didn't bother with the rope, only clambered over the edge and inched her way down the natural toe- and hand-holds, dropping the last half to hit the ground. She huddled there a moment, panting.

"You could've used the rope," Joe said.

She shook her head. "I told you. The tree hates me."

The idea was unnerving. Joe shuddered as he picked the iron pole back up. "C'mon." He had her turn so he could rummage in the backpack, then pulled out the flashlight and handed it to her.

That made it easier to see, though more spooky. It was too quiet down here, closed in, all sounds muffled, the air smelling of rotten wood, wet rock and mud. With the flashlight, Joe was far too aware of the rock and earth above him, close, heavy, damp and suffocating…

"Joe." Kris shone the flashlight towards the far end, deep in the shadows. What they hadn't seen before, because of the dark.

Thin white sticks and one grayish-white rock.

Curiosity was a strong draw. Bones. A broken skull. Arm, part of a femur, thigh. Scraps of faded cloth embroidered with tattered flowers. All of it too small to be an adult. Joe glanced back towards where the rope dangled. Still there. Still thankfully, gratefully there. But who…?

"Chet's grandma," Kris said. "That story she told about her baby sister."

Joe nodded, swallowing. He'd only paid half-attention, but the story had been _creepy_. "The monster got her."

"Or she fell down the hole and they never found her." Kris touched the small skull. "She's not here anymore. She's gone."

Okay, now Kris was just getting weird. But the thought of a little girl falling, breaking bones, starving to death in the cold dark all alone…Joe shuddered again. "We'll tell Dad when we get back." When. _When._ Joe set his jaw. "C'mon."

Down the tunnel to the glittery white cubby-space, then further down to the larger chamber where the fairy monster queen had been — no carved rock now, just twisting, glistening, slick-looking shapes dripping with water…

"I knew you two would show up."

Joe yelled, jumped, the metal pole clanging against the rock with a terrific, rattling echo; Kris squeaked and dropped the flashlight.

Clay leaned against the near wall.

The man had his own flashlight. Clay didn't look surprised, didn't look angry, only pushed away from the wall. "Your parents are watching your houses. I told 'em I'd cover here. Now. Mind telling me why you're doing something so phenomenally _stupid_?"

"How'd you get here?" Joe said, incredulous. "We didn't see you. There wasn't any car at the Mortons!"

"You're talking to a Ranger used to hiding from North Koreans. Answer the question."

Kris grabbed the iron pole, but only managed to lift the point partway up; Joe hefted it with her. The man still looked like Clay, but…

"Touch the iron," Kris demanded in a shaking voice.

"Huh. You two have some brains, after all." Clay pulled off his right glove and gripped the point end of the iron. "Satisfied? Now what do you think you're pulling?"

Joe scowled. Maybe Kris didn't know everything about fairies. "Who won the World Series last year?"

There was a pause; Clay's mouth quirked. "No clue. I hate baseball. I can tell you anything you want to know about the Jets, though. Now. You two are turning right back around and both your butts are going straight back to the hospital —"

"No way," Joe said.

"You don't get a choice," Clay said.

"My brother's_ dying! _Don't tell me what I don't _get!"_

Light burst in, cutting them all off with a soundless implosion of wind and glory.

Joe took an involuntary step back, but didn't let go the iron pole. Wind stirred the cavern, but this time, it didn't smell like grass or apples or spring — it stank of old rock, dead water, stale air.

It wasn't Mom, either.

Not the gray monster — all Joe saw was something tall. Graceful. Haloed in golden light that streamed from an open archway behind it. _Beautiful._

"My dear child." A woman's voice, light, thrilling, silvery, as if a hand caressed wind chimes. Something deep inside Joe jumped in response. "I knew you would return."

"Wow," Kris breathed.

Joe tightened his grip on the iron. Whatever it was, it remained graceful, light, beautiful. He hefted the pole in both hands. "You're killing my brother," he said to the light. "Leave him alone, or else."

"You think to assault me?" The woman sounded amused. "Dear, sweet child. Harm me, and the doorway closes. You lose all chance at healing the sick one."

"I'm not your child," Joe snarled.

"Gentle little one." She was still smiling, superior, condescending, _I-know-better. "_I have watched you for a long time now. You have no taste for blood. You are no warrior. You are too gentle a heart." Her smile changed; she leaned close, her gaze only on Joe. "Perhaps…we can bargain."

That wasn't how it was supposed to go. In all the stories Joe had read, in all the TV shows, the good guy simply confronting a bad guy caused the villain to surrender, or got a confession, or the bad woman would break down weeping — Joe often wondered why Dad would snort in disgust whenever _Perry Mason_ came on.

The fairy woman didn't seem impressed by the iron nuke and definitely wasn't bursting into tears.

Okay, _now_ what?

Behind the woman, someone peeped out into the cavern — Click. Wide-eyed, the little brownie stared up at the woman, then at Joe and Kris, then gestured frantically, pointing at the pole, then at the ground at his feet.

The woman turned to see what Joe was looking at and rage twisted her face. She lunged at Click —

Joe didn't stop to reason it out. He wrenched the pole from Kris's grasp, hurled it past the woman and into the doorway just as Click squeaked and dove past the woman towards Joe and Kris.

The pole clattered to the rock, most of it inside the doorway, though a bare inch or two remained outside…

With a hissing intake of breath, the woman rounded, then just as suddenly, straightened. Hard. Cold. Glaring down at Joe.

Joe wrenched Frank's jackknife out of his pocket, clenched his fist around it. Next to him, Kris brandished the bat; Joe made a mental note to teach her baseball. Her grip was _awful._

Chittering, Click hid behind them, gripping Kris's right leg. "You locked it open," Kris whispered to Joe. "Click says they can't close it with the iron like that."

The woman's gaze moved down. "Do not dare return, little _sídheog,_" she said softly. "Not _ever."_

Distressed cries echoed beyond the archway; the iron had cut away part of the light, an ugly black hole eclipsing the singing brilliance. "Heal my brother," Joe said, "and I'll get that thing out of there."

The woman smiled. "Is that all you wish?"

Was this woman stupid? Joe opened his mouth, but Click chittered frantically —

"Joe, he says it's not Frank. It's a changeling." Kris gulped. "Frank's in there. With her."

"_No, he's not!"_ Joe had held Frank's hand. Frank had helped them escape. It'd been_ real! _"Frank's going to die!_"_

"Yes," the woman said, still smiling, taunting. "He will."

"He won't!" Kris spat at her. "You fairies snatch kids and leave changelings in their place. The changelings die and no one can cure 'em and you still have the kid."

"She's right, buddy," Clay said quietly. "It's not your brother in the hospital. Mar and your dad proved it." His mouth quirked again. "The Sidhe haven't caught on to fingerprints, yet."

"They play games with your brother's life," the woman said. "The sick one dies while they chatter."

Joe wasn't sure he trusted Clay; the man could say anything to get them to go home. He definitely didn't trust the fairy woman. Kris, he trusted…and now Click…but…

_Frank._

Joe's hand clenched around the knife. Frank's scout-knife, the knife Frank was so proud of. The knife he carried everywhere, that he never let go.

The knife Frank had dropped, had refused to take back, had told Joe to hang on to.

…fairies hated iron…

Joe raised his head. "The iron stays. You can't close that door until we get it out." He brandished the knife at the woman. "Let my brother go. Bring him out."

"You demand much for little," the woman said coldly. _"You_ intruded on my realm. _You_ brought the cold iron here and threaten my person and my realm with it. Your brother will pay the price for your arrogance." Gone was the gentle soothing; the woman leaned closer, her face sharp, feral, hungry. "Remove the iron. Or his screams will haunt your nightmares."

Joe swallowed. "You hurt my brother, and I'm not removing _nothing."_

"I hurt your brother, and he will bleed, whether or not you remove the iron." The woman's gaze bored into Joe. "Shall we find out how much blood it takes?" Again, that slow, teeth-baring smile. "Or…perhaps…we trade, instead. You, for him."

Click chittered again. "She doesn't know where Frank is," Kris said. "She doesn't have him. He got away."

Joe had thought the fairy woman had looked angry before — now she was _furious._ The light around her intensified, a halo of silver fire. She took a single step forward, halted when Joe raised the knife and Kris waved the bat. "Come within my reach, little _sídheog,_"the woman snarled. "Do so, and the bards will shudder at your fate for eons of this world."

To Joe's delighted shock, Click stuck his thumbs in his ears, waggled his hands like donkey-ears, and stuck his tongue out, a loud, rude raspberry.

But this was getting them nowhere. Joe had to get his brother out, and the woman wasn't cooperating. He was getting the horrible idea that no matter what she said or promised, it would only twist to something bad, something he wouldn't want, something that would only hurt them and Frank. And if she had people in there _hunting _Frank — no. _No._

Joe tightened his grip on the knife, glanced at Kris, then at the archway, saw her nod — Joe swallowed hard, tensed —

— and got grabbed.

Clay had him in a tight smothering grip, huge hands that hauled Joe back and away, pinning Joe's arms. "No, you don't. You two are getting out of here _now._"

Struggling, squirming, Joe _bit_, kicked, his heel ramming into something soft — just as Kris whacked Clay in the crotch with the bat. Clay swore, dropped Joe, and Joe scrabbled away. Kris shoved the bat at him, and Joe fumbled, nearly dropped it, then rounded, swung at the fairy woman, who'd lunged for them —

The bat crunched into her face.

Fairy or not, the woman _shrieked._

Joe didn't wait. He dodged Clay's grasp, then dove past the woman…

…and through the archway.


	12. Dedication

_**A/N: Thank you, StormPrincess88, Leyapearl, LaurenHardy13, Stork Hardy & TeamWhoeverHitBellaWithACar. All my readers, thank you!**_

_Before we get to the real story, there's something I need to share. I was having an ordinary phone chat with Mom yesterday and updating her on all the various health crap between me & my husband - and out of the blue, she starts demanding when "the third book" is coming out (AKA, my sequel to "Voodoo Doll": "The SF Vampire"). Then, while I was still floundering in surprise, she said, "And your sister took my copy of the first book & she's reading it now, she won't give it back, can I have another?"  
_

_Y'see, my family's never been supportive of any kind of creative work. It's easiest to say that the arts were not supported, belittled, and downright DIScouraged whenever they found out about it; all my art classes & work & whatnot were very much on the sly, not talked about, and not discussed. So it surprised me - after NaNoWriMo 2011, which offered 5 free copies of your 'book' through CreateSpace, & which I took full advantage of for "Voodoo Doll", just to share with friends who love the old '70s show as much as I do - when Mom spotted my last copy of it during a parental visit and asked to take it. She got back with me about a month later - again, out of the blue - saying how much she loved it, and was there a sequel? I'd just had "House on Possessed Hill" printed up the same way, and sent her a copy of that...and now she's demanding more.  
_

_To top that, my sister (who knew nothing about the above chat) sent me an email this morning saying the same thing & asking for a copy of "House". I'm still in shock, hearing this kind of support from my family. MY family. Over _**_fanfic_,** _for cryin' out loud, for a show that none of them were into (seriously, they hated the show)_._ Over ANYTHING creative. _

_I'm now on notice to send Mom & Younger Sister copies of anything I write "or else". So...somewhat belatedly...the rest of this tale is dedicated to both Mom & Deb, and to all those family members who support us crazy writers, no matter what we write.  
_

_Back to your regularly scheduled story._

#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#

* * *

Kris tore the iron skillet out of the backpack just in time, brandishing it in both hands and backing up as Clay lunged for her — then something _zinged_ by overhead in a sting of light, barely missing her, striking rock and showering her with pebbles and stone dust. Behind her, Click squeaked frantically, but Kris was too terrified, too tense, too _angry_ to listen in her head to what he was saying.

She bumped into stone. End of the line.

"Stay back!" Kris raised the skillet, and Clay halted; he was bent over, clutching at his crotch and swearing under his breath. "Stay back or I'll _kill_ you!" Well, okay, maybe not kill; Clay was way too big for her to do that, but she could make a large dent somewhere. _Several_ large dents.

Tears were far away — or, rather, she could feel them, but the rage wasn't letting them out. She had to get through the archway. She had to help Frank and Joe. This was all her fault. Her fault. She had to make it right. She had to.

Click squeaked again, gripping her right leg and tugging on her jeans.

"I applaud you." The fairy queen bared teeth. Her face was bloody; her left hand glowed with cold silver light. "Most well done, ugly child. You have given me exactly what I wanted. That fair boy, so tender, so young…"

"I didn't give you _nothing_," Kris snapped. "You can't close the door while the iron's there, and I'm not moving it until Joe and Frank come back." The queen scowled; Kris glared right back. "They better come back okay or it'll stay there. You hurt 'em, you _touch_ 'em, and all us stinky dirty humans'll come down here with shovels and cameras and guns and potato chips and they'll dig you all up and you'll end up in the _zoo."_

"Next time Mar hauls me down here to rescue you kids," Clay muttered, "I'm telling her where to shove it." He managed to straighten, then bent over again, panting.

The fairy woman drew herself up, imperious, regal. "You dare bargain with me?"

"No bargain," Kris said. _"Fact."_

"Your _fact _is null," the woman said. "Do you truly think I would trust only this doorway? They will never find the entrance, as always. And you will never leave, just as you could not before."

"You really think we're that stupid?" Clay settled against the wall. "These kids broke your glamour with the best of all counters: common sense. Of course," he pulled something out of his pocket, something that gleamed dully in the light of the flashlights: iron nails, "I gave them a bit of help to make sure it _stayed_ broke."

Long, scowling silence.

"I'll bring you bananas," Kris offered. "They'll probably put you right next to the monkeys."

Clay laughed, rolling, deep, evil. "Elephants. Keepers always need help shoveling sh—"

"Enter, then," the fairy woman overrode them coldly. "Enter and retrieve them, so I may see the backside of you quickly for it." Oh, that slow, chilling smile. "Do not expect my help."

Gripping the iron pan tightly, Kris took a step forward, then paused. Something in the woman's expression warned her; it reminded Kris of her original mother, whenever Kris had done any of a million things that earned punishment.

"You are indeed an ugly child," the fairy queen said. Speculative. Cold. Weighing. "Little wonder the boy-children were so eager to leave you behind."

Kris shrugged. Compared to what her original parents had called her, that was nothing. But behind her, Click chittered nervously, and she glanced at him. If she left, that left _him_ at the mercies of the fairy queen. Click couldn't cross the door, not with Her Royal Awfulness threatening to take him apart if he tried, and the only safe crossing was the iron, which he couldn't touch, either. "No way," Kris said. "I'm not leaving Click to you."

Then she stopped, uncertain how to get the queen to bring Frank and Joe out safely. If she left something out of any bargain, no matter how small, the queen would twist her words. She'd wiggle out of it. She'd kill them…or _worse._

Clay made a noise; Kris glanced quickly at him. "Mar'll have my hide for this," he muttered. "I'll protect your friend. Get your butt in there and get 'em."

She eyed him suspiciously; Click chittered again. _Trust?_

"I can hear you, too," Clay said to the brownie. He knelt to the brownie's level. "And better. Not just _my_ protection, but a home. My oath in the Association on it. We'll talk later. Deal?"

"You tried to stop us," Kris squeaked. Association? Was this guy one of the Blades Mar always talked about? She'd just whacked a Blade with a bat? "And now you're tossing me after 'em?"

Clay met her gaze. Serious. Adult. "They know you. They don't know me. And if that other boy's anything like you and Joe…" He stared up at the fairy queen, and a slow, evil smile spread across Clay's face. "Lady, you're gonna regret ever messing with 'em."


	13. The Hunt

Frank had been busy.

The peeing place had been every bit as disgusting as Frank had thought it'd be, though no worse than trees in the woods during scout camp (and Frank never understood why most of the other boys got so gleeful about that — sooner or later, they'd _sit_ under those trees). But he couldn't just sit here and wait for Click to come back. Click might get caught; someone could tail Click to his hole. A hundred and one things that could go wrong circled Frank's head, all the things from Dad's cop stories…

…not to mention that he had no food or water_._

Frank rocked back and forth, hugging his knees, thinking. Known rules: don't eat anything. Don't trust anything they say. Something about cold iron. Gramma Kelly's tales had also said something about that; if Frank got out of this, he would start memorizing _everything_ everyone said, just in case. Thinking about it, his steel jackknife had held that thing off. It was a knife, sure, but a tool, not a weapon by any stretch of the imagination. But now, no iron on him; Frank wasn't sure about his sneaker eyelets, and the zipper and button of his jeans looked more copper than steel.

He filed it away as _later, possibly useful._ Right now — assets. Clothes: jeans, blue flannel shirt, thermal undershirt, sneakers, itchy wool socks. One handkerchief, at Aunt Gertrude's insistence. One hole big enough to sit in. Dirt, plenty of. Rocks, plenty of. Wood…well, plenty of trees around, but getting it without being spotted might be tricky. These people — whoever, whatever they were — wanted Joe. They wanted to use Frank to _get_ Joe. But _why?_

The why: not helpful at the moment, but definitely important. Right now, the only goal was to get away. Cautiously Frank eased up out of the hole. There was a rushy, watery, roaring sound somewhere in the distance; the three trees barricading the hole looked like nothing he'd ever seen before. He laid a hand against the bark of the closest. Despite the rough, gnarled appearance, it felt smooth, damp, and cold under his hand.

No one seemed to be around. Other than the rushy roaring of water, it was silent. Echoing. Too silent, a corner of Frank's brain insisted; he'd been ambushed by water balloons too many times at scout camp that past summer to trust silence. Frank didn't move from the cover of the trees, studying the surrounding forest as best he could in the faint moonlight, the shadows, the rocks, the underbrush. Still no one. Still nothing.

He needed a weapon, something, anything. He'd gotten lucky before. He needed something to even the odds. Cautiously Frank eased out from the trees, keeping an eye out as best he could, ignoring his growling stomach, and searched for fallen branches. The bigger, the better.

Fallen leaves, small twigs, cluttered and mixed in the usual detritus covering any forest floor, but no big dead-wood branches, not even larger ones. Okay, that went straight to flat-out _weird._ Frank grit his teeth; his scout-master had cautioned against taking live wood, but this was an emergency. Maybe if he got up into the trees, he could see the way out. Frank went over to the nearest tree, swung himself up to the lowest branch.

His hands went straight through. His body tensed and braced all wrong, Frank fell flat on his back, knocking the air from his lungs. He lay choking and wheezing air back into his lungs, fighting to get his breath back.

"Frank?" A loud whisper.

Still fighting to breathe, Frank struggled to his elbows, then up to his knees, just as Joe peered around a clump of trees and brush.

Then Frank's brain caught up past the pain. These people had mimicked Mom; Kris had claimed to see _her_ mother. Not moving, Frank stared at his brother…at what _seemed_ to be his brother. Dirt-smeared, bruised and scraped face, tangled gold-brown hair poking out from under a red stocking cap, the new Red Sox coat that Joe had been so proud to get, his treasured Carl Yastrzemski bat gripped tight in both hands, the bat he'd 'killed' Fred-the-closet-monster with.

Frank started to back up. All the details were right…but wrong. Joe hadn't had _any_ of that when they'd fallen down here.

Bat raised, Joe hadn't moved either. He stared hard at Frank, then dug into his pocket with his left hand and held something out. "Touch it," Joe demanded. "Or I'll beat the crap out of you."

_Joe,_ threatening to beat him up? That definitely wasn't right. Frank looked down.

His jackknife.

More important…his _steel_ jackknife.

"Um." Frank eyed the bat nervously. Maybe this was Joe, but Frank remembered too well what Joe had done to Fred (not to mention a tape recorder and a nearby Little League trophy that had been too close to the carnage), and his brother looked too freaked out to be calm about anything at the moment.

"_Touch it!"_

Keeping a wary eye on that bat, Frank reached out a cautious hand, laid it over the knife —

The world _changed._

Frank went very, very still. The forest had disappeared. A cave. They were in a cave. He was surrounded by glittering stalactites and stalagmites, huge stone pillars, slick, glistening, sparkling with wet, white rock streaked with red, green, glittery mica. He turned to look at the trio of trees that hid Click's hole — a trio of stalagmites (scratched deeply with patterns of slanted, crossed lines) had taken their place.

Somehow, impossibly, there was still light. Silvery, faint, no more than moonlight, barely enough to see by.

Joe lowered his bat, pushed the knife into Frank's hands — then tackled Frank with a rough hug. "You're okay. You're _alive!"_

"Of course I'm —" Frank froze. Just up on an overhang of white rock and red-streaked earth, something had moved. Something had peered over the edge, had ducked back quickly when Frank had looked.

Openly elated, Joe hadn't stopped chattering, babbling something about changelings and hospitals and Christmas. But he must have noticed that Frank wasn't reacting. Joe shut up, then glanced up just as the _something_ peered over the rise again and ducked back.

Frank clamped a hand over Joe's mouth before Joe let out more than a muffled gasp. The far-off rushy roaring masked noises, but Frank thought he could hear faint scrapes, as if claws against rock.

Worse, something peered out from around the trio of trees that hid Click's hole, a quick flash of gleaming eyes.

"Move," Frank breathed, but Joe was already backing up slowly, brandishing the bat.

Then, as one, both turned and ran.

Behind them, the howls started, wild, echoing, savage.

Slick, treacherous rock. Tunnels. Twisty columns and spirals, limestone coated in mud, trickles of water running across their path. Around a bend, another curve, another jut of sharp white rock, another slick slope. Frank's feet slid out from under him, and his bare hands scraped rock as he scrabbled madly to stop his fall; his ankle turned, a sharp lance of white-hot pain.

Joe grabbed him, stopped him. They were at the edge of another cliff, a huge dark pit dropping away to echoing blackness. The path they followed continued around the edge, thin and slippery. For a moment, both boys clung to the rock, panting, then Joe helped Frank up.

"There!" Joe yelped, and they scrabbled back into a dark cleft in the rock, hidden by a jutting spike of stalagmite. Frank shoved Joe ahead of him; it was a tight squeeze. The wet cold rock pressed against them, stinking of rot and stagnant water, but they both made it in, scrambling back as far as they could.

Outside, the howling grew louder. Frank watched the thin opening. In the faint light, he could barely see what ran, loped, and scrabbled past the cleft: shadowy, stick-like figures, branchy arms, curling horns, gleaming fangs, leathery wings.

"Mr. Morton needs to use more pesticide," Joe whispered.

Shivering in the cold draft, Frank breathed out a laugh. "Right."

Just outside, one of the hunters had stopped, sniffing the air with an elongated snout. Its eyes were milky white, its back covered in coarse, long spines of hair braided with feathers.

So it tracked by scent. That made sense. It lived in a cave, and things that lived in dark caves had bad eyesight; Frank remembered that from science class. If it found them…

Frank glanced back. Even in the dark, Joe's bright red coat was dangerously visible. "Your coat," Frank muttered. "Quick."

Joe didn't question, didn't complain, only squirmed out of his coat and let Frank take it. Keeping a careful eye on the sniffling, snorting hunter outside, Frank felt around the cleft, found a few hand-sized rocks and bundled them into the coat. Then, carefully, mindful of his ankle, Frank eased towards the front, just as the hunter raised its head — and hurled the coat past it, down the slope and over the pit, a bright red trail of scent and _human_ falling down…

Howls erupted, scrapes and scrabbling, hoots and growls, all echoing, fading after the coat.

Suddenly trembling so hard he couldn't stand, Frank braced himself against the rock. Safe, for the moment. He looked back at Joe, who was pale and huddled around his knees at the back of the cleft, and Frank limped back to collapse to sit beside his brother.

"That was my Red Sox coat," Joe said resentfully. "My _lucky_ coat."

_Those things were after you,_ Frank almost retorted, then stopped himself just in time. Scaring his younger brother even more — no. Things were bad enough. Frank had to be the grown-up. He had to take charge. He had to stay calm. "How'd you get here?"

Silence. Joe wiped at his face. "There's a door. That queen opened it, and me and Kris locked it —"

"_Kris?"_

"She distracted 'em. Whacked that Ranger with my bat. I ran before they could get me again."

_Kris_ had done that? The scared little runaway who'd run from a _snowball fight? _ "Wait…whacked _who?"_

"Clay. He rescued us, before." Joe hesitated. "You probably don't remember that part. You're still in the hospital."

One of these days, Joe would tell a story straight, and Frank would drop dead in shock. "Okay." Frank breathed out heavily. Important point: a way out, somewhere. Second important point: getting to it. "Let's get out of here. Before they figure out where we are."

"Not that way." Joe's voice shook. "They'll have a scout behind 'em. That's what the Indians and settlers did. They always had a rear scout to catch anyone who tried to ambush them from behind."

Trust his cowboys-and-Indians-fanatic brother to shoot down a perfectly good plan. Frank sighed.

"And I just ran," Joe sounded small, scared. "I didn't pay attention where — they were chasing me — I don't know how I got here."

"It's okay." Frank gripped Joe's shoulder in a tight, brother-to-brother clasp. "We'll get out of this. We _will."_ Somehow, he smiled. "You got your bat. If those things are smart, they'll start running now."

His younger brother managed a shaky smile back. "Right."

Frank started to push back to his feet, gasped in pain as he put weight on his ankle. Joe caught him before he fell again. "Ow," Frank breathed, then glared when he saw Joe biting his lip. "Don't you dare. We're going to get out of this. We have to. I want to see you explain to Aunt Gertrude how you lost your new coat."

"_I_ lost it?" Joe said indignantly, but then he stopped, twisted around, then clambered back, reached to feel blindly at the rock. "Frank…there's an opening back here."

"We are not going spelunking." Frank was proud of that word. It'd been on the vocabulary test last week, though he'd driven the teacher nuts by asking when any of them would ever use it. "Not in the _dark."_

"So we sit here and wait for them to find us? That's _stupid!"_

"Exploring a cave in the dark's even _more_ stupid!"

Their voices had risen — then cut off, as something scraped the rock, right outside. Something big.

Joe grabbed Frank's arm, pulled him into the dark. Frank wasn't going to argue now: getting eaten or exploring a cave, easy choice. He stumbled over another rock, grabbed onto his brother's shoulder for support…

…just as Joe yelped, slipped, grabbed Frank back, and they both lost their balance and slid flailing down muddy, water-slick rock to land tangled in something soft that stank of rotted vegetables, leather, mold. Total, complete darkness; Frank blinked, squinted to get his eyes to adjust, couldn't. Couldn't see Joe, couldn't see _anything…_

"Yesss," something hissed. "Visitorsssss. Ssssweeet, deliciousssss vissssitorssss…"


	14. Monsters

_**A/N: Thank you to Leyapearl, SnowPrincess88, Stork Hardy & TeamWhoeverHitBellaWithACar for the reviews! If you want to see a REAL faery cave, google "Reed Flute Cave" in China. Seriously. Wow.**_

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Joe scrabbled for his bat. His hand found it just as _something _grabbed his ankle, something cold, slimy, and terrifyingly strong. Joe whacked down, ending in a crunch and a piercing screech that rang through the dark and stone.

It let go.

Curses, moaning, shuffling noises, with chitters, squeals, and rattling somewhere above their heads. A hand grabbed his shoulder; Joe barely stifled his yelp: Frank. Both brothers scrambled up and together staggered blindly until Joe's hands touched solid rock. He set his back to it and peered through the darkness. Not quite total: faint light gleamed on the far side, a dim blue glow blocked out at intervals by a huge shadow shuffling, fumbling, stumbling.

Other than that, Joe couldn't see his brother, couldn't see his own hands, couldn't see _anything._

The curses died to silence, followed by sniffling, more shuffling. "Ssssmell you," the something hissed. "Ssssmell fear. Ssssmell ssssunlight. Ssssmell humanssss."

Frank gripped Joe's hand, cold metal between their palms, and Joe understood. Frank had his knife out. Joe brandished the bat, tried to track where the thing was. Somewhere over there. Somewhere. The blue light seemed to be coming from another opening. Maybe another way out. Getting past whatever this was, though…

Time for an _OK_-_Corral-at-High-Noon_ cowboy bluff. "My brother has iron." Joe struggled to keep his voice steady. "I have ash. Let us go, and we won't hurt you."

The noises stopped. Joe reached out a cautious hand to feel along the rock, slowly eased to his right, testing with his foot to make sure there wasn't another hole. Then he froze. Something else had crossed the light, something small and quick, barely there. Something that cut off their escape route.

"Ssssssmell no iron." Shuffling again, louder, closer, followed by a wave of foul breath that stank like canned asparagus. "Assshhhh protect from magic —" Joe swung at the sound, but fists smashed into Joe's hands, knocking the bat away, "— not _me."_

Long wiry arms grabbed Joe and pulled him in before he could dodge. Bony claws caressed his throat, as something wet and stinking snuffled up his chest and soaked his flannel shirt, then pressed under Joe's chin: a snout with fangs gleaming in the faint light, then a wide gaping maw…

Desperately Joe yelled, kicked, scored something soft that squelched. Whatever it was yowled, then staggered as Frank threw himself at it, stabbing and slashing at whatever he could reach. The thing grunted, jerked with a wet, ripping slap, and Joe heard his brother cry out, the heavy thud of impact and skidding scrape of skin and cloth against rock.

Another yell: high-pitched, terrified anger.

The thing twisted. The smell of rusty iron swung past Joe's face in a rush of air, ending in a metallic _crunch _and a sick cracking squish, like a pumpkin smashing against pavement. Wet drops splattered Joe's face; the claws and arms spasmed, went limp.

Metal clanged against stone. Joe smacked into the ground, scrabbled back through sticky damp debris, ran right into something soft. It grabbed him, and Joe yelped in pure terror, only for a familiar hand to clamp over his mouth and haul him back against the wall. _Frank_, just Frank, only Frank…

Panting, the brothers huddled in the darkness, neither daring to move. Whatever the new monster was, Joe definitely did not want it to find them.

Small fumbling sounds, then a plastic click, then _light._

Bright, blinding. Joe raised a shaking hand against it, squinted —

"_Kris!"_ Frank scrambled up.

Trembling so hard she could barely stand, Kris stood there, the flashlight clutched in both hands. Staggering over, Frank grabbed her into a shaking, laughing hug, but Joe couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only huddle back against the wall, staring at the thing that had nearly eaten him.

The very large, very _dead_ thing.

Folds of leathery gray skin covered in tattered, muddy rabbit hides. A tangled necklace of large bones and small teeth. Thick fingers with wicked curved claws. Stringy greasy gray hair woven with finger bones. An elongated head and snout, yellow incised fangs, all shattered and splattered in a dripping, oozing black mess. The heavy cast iron skillet lay next to it, smeared with gore.

"How'd you _find _us?" Frank demanded.

Pale, trembling, Kris only stared at the mound of dead gray.

Slowly Joe braced himself to his feet, then wobbled over and added himself to the hug. That did it — all three broke down, gulping back tears and shock.

It didn't last. Frank was the first to wipe his face with the back of his hand. He took the flashlight from Kris, shone it around the space as Joe retrieved his baseball bat, then picked the skillet up out of the splatter.

"Mar's gonna kill you for getting her pan dirty," Joe said to Kris, as he handed it to her. He felt shaky, sick. "How _did_ you find us?"

She took it gingerly, tried to wipe it off against the stone. "I followed the mess."

Well, that made sense. When he'd dived through the door, Joe hadn't had any plan beyond _find Frank_. Joe had just run pell-mell, dodging around twisted rock columns and stalagmites, twisting away from grasping hands, plowing through a couple gatherings and running down several misshapen figures hunched over rocks and trickles of water. From the yells and shrieks, they'd been just as terrified of the desperate running boy as he'd been of them — hopefully he'd given those things nightmares for _life._

"Look at this place," Frank breathed.

Joe's gaze followed the flashlight's beam as Frank shone it around the room. Splintery shelves, clay jars, tangled rope woven of gray hair. A dirty mess of a fire-pit, blackened and grimy with charcoal. Crumbled yellow and whitish rocks scattered on a smooth flat stone marked with chalk-like yellow runes and black scorches. Bones. Lots of bones, all shapes and sizes: ribs, pelvic-bones, small fingers, femurs, tied and knotted together with rough twine and more gray hair. Skulls strung up on the walls like bulbous garlic braids: deer, squirrel, rabbit…and other.

"You remember the way out?" Frank said to Kris.

Biting her lip, Kris nodded.

Joe heaved a huge sigh of relief. But Kris stared at the stinking mound of dead gray. "I didn't mean to kill it," she whispered.

"It was going to _eat_ me!" Joe said, aghast.

"They won't care. You heard that queen. They _won't."_

"Maybe they won't care it's dead, either." Frank had knelt by a pile of bones and refuse. "Look at this."

Joe edged closer, just enough to see past Frank. Not just bones. Tiny bodies, many smaller than Click had been: slender, stick-thin, some with elongated fingers and toes like tree-frogs, satiny wings with crow-feather-like sheen, some with delicate pointed ears, others with impossibly long faces, eyes torn out, skulls popped open — all half-eaten, ripped in two, crunched on, tossed aside.

Then Joe saw another pile…and swallowed hard, turned away.

"Let's get out of here," Kris whispered. "Please."

But Joe had spotted something else. "Frank — up there."

Frank shone the light up. High up on the wall, crude stone ledges held cages; small hands and claws reached out between the bars. That was enough for Joe — before Frank could stop him, Joe set the bat down and hoisted himself up, scrabbling for handholds. The rock was slick and damp under his hands, but he got within reach of the first set of cages and braced himself against an outcrop of rock and the middle ledge.

"Careful," Frank said. "I see teeth."

"I didn't really need to know that," Joe said sourly. Trying to keep his fingers out of reach of whatever was inside, he snagged the first cage and pulled it over. A little thing smaller than Click cowered back: bird-boned slender with spindly arms and legs, white hair braided with pebbles, brown-feathered wings banded with red, slanty black eyes that looked to be all-pupil.

"It's okay," Joe breathed, working at the cage door. It rattled, but didn't budge. "We're gonna get you out. We're not gonna hurt you." He glanced down at Frank and Kris. "Look around for a key or something. Or something I can use to break this."

Slowly the little one crept forward and touched the tip of Joe's finger with its own. It chittered something that sounded like a question.

"Sorry," Joe said. "I can't understand you." The cage was crudely woven of thick thorny brambles lashed together with braided cord that stung Joe's fingers as if he'd touched thistle. Dropping it would probably break it open, but Joe didn't want to hurt the little thing trapped inside. The prisoners in the other cages watched, their eyes gleaming in the dim flashlight.

"Here." Frank tossed up his knife.

Joe caught it one-handed. "Stay back," he warned the little one, but it had already scooted out of reach, staring at the knife with wide, fearful eyes. Joe kept up the soothing noises as if he was talking to a lost puppy, and sawed at the braided cord.

"Drop them down here," Frank said. "We can catch them and break them open."

"They've got thorns," Joe warned. Then the braided cord gave way; the little feathered thing squeaked as the brambles fell apart. Carefully, Joe picked the brambles off it, dropped them off the ledge.

The little one cowered back, squeaking loudly.

"It's okay," Joe said quietly. "You're free. You can go."

It cocked its head, then suddenly leaped from the ledge in a rattle of brambles and landed on Joe's shoulder. It perched there, elongated fingers and toes gripping Joe's flannel shirt tightly. Joe went very still, but the little one only chittered in his ear, tugged on his hair.

"Looks like you made a friend," Frank said, grinning. "Take him home for Aunt Gertrude."

Joe could imagine Aunt Gertrude's face, and grinned himself. "I'll try dropping the others. Get ready."

The other cages were harder to reach. Joe had to lean too far out, and there weren't any foot- or hand-holds that he could use to brace himself at that angle while he cut cord. Using one of the broken brambles, he barely managed to snag the next closest and scooted it towards the edge of the shelf. The being inside squealed, then shrieked when Joe pushed it off the shelf, but Frank caught the cage and set it down carefully.

Frank picked up one of the loose brambles and started prying the cage open, as Kris knelt, studied the cage, then looked up towards the shelf. "Let me try something," she said, and scrambled up the other side; she was small enough to squirm out onto the stone ledge, belly-down. She snagged a cage and poked at the lock with her finger; the door clicked, swung open.

"How'd you do that?" Frank said.

Kris looked down at him. "Magic."

Frank rolled his eyes, then went back to prying the other cage apart. "You and your magic tricks. Fine, be that way."

"For an annoying tagalong, you're pretty useful," Joe said to her, grinning. She only shrugged, squirmed further onto the ledge to the next cage.

Not all the cages had prisoners, and the others simply took off, scampering, flying, running, leaping away the moment the cage door popped open or the brambles broke apart. Only the first remained, clinging to Joe's shoulder; the hair-tugging had turned into something more deliberate — a braid, Joe realized when he reached to feel it, woven with a soft brown feather. "Kris, get the cookies. He must be starved."

"Him and me both," Frank muttered.

"We brought peanut butter, too," Joe said, as Kris rooted around in the backpack. It was surreal, unnerving, sitting on the far side of the dim stone chamber, the mound of stinking dead gray across from them, and sharing out cookies, peanut butter, and a bottle of Coke. The little one poked at the peanut butter and wheat bread, turned up its nose at the Coke, but went into squeaking spasms over the cookies, its face dusted with powdered sugar and cookie crumbs.

"Kris," Joe said, "can you understand him, like you did Click?"

The little one chittered nervously. It had leapt to Frank's shoulder, and was now braiding a strand of Frank's hair, threading it through a small carved pebble.

Kris rubbed at her forehead. "A little. He's not as clear as Click was."

"His wings look like a sparrow's," Frank said.

The little thing chittered again. "Can we call you that?" Joe asked. "Sparrow?"

It only went back to braiding Frank's hair, whispering under its breath in an odd sing-song.

"I don't think he understands us," Kris said.

"It doesn't matter," Frank said firmly. "Let's get out of here."


	15. The Cave

_**A/N: Thanks for the reviews, SnowPrincess88, Leyapearl, Stork Hardy! All my readers rock!**_

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They scrambled up the other tunnel, Frank leaning heavily on Joe and favoring his left foot. It opened to a ledge and a thin, crumbly, well-concealed path that sloped down along a massive waterfall-like mass of stone, and there they halted, peered over the concealing outcrop of rock.

"Wow," Joe breathed. _"Wow."_

They were looking out at a huge cavern. A silvery lake spread across the far end, a true waterfall filling the cavern with loud, echoey, rushy roaring. The walls and open ground overflowed with thousands of columns, stalagmites, and stalactites, frozen waterfalls of stone and forests of massive quartz that glowed deep brilliant blue, emerald, and scarlet. Graceful beings with flowing hair and colorless skin moved through that stone forest, searching the outcrops and niches.

They held weighted nets and ropes. They did not look happy.

Overlaid on top of all the rock, wavering, faint and _not-quite-there_: trees. A forest. A moonlit sky blazing with stars. Joe rubbed at his eyes; they itched, and the weird double-image made his head hurt. He'd seen the forest before he'd found Frank, until he'd pulled the jackknife out again; the change had startled him, but he hadn't been able to really look — being chased by monsters had preempted that.

"Up there," Kris whispered. "Top of that hill." She pointed across the cavern: a slick rise of white rock lit with floating lights.

A lot of open space, and too many other fairies — elves — brownies — _whatever —_ between them and there. Joe bit his lip; they'd get spotted, definitely. He rubbed at his eyes again.

"You okay?" Frank said.

"Head hurts." The little one — Sparrow — was back on Joe's shoulder, singing softly to itself and braiding another strand of Joe's hair; Joe eyed his brother, _everything-has-to-make-sense_ Frank. "What do you see?"

Frank hesitated. "A big cave." But then Frank met Joe's gaze, as if daring Joe to contradict him. "When I ran, it was a forest. Real enough I could smell the trees. You gave me my knife, and it all changed." Frank looked down. "That happened with that thing, too. I saw Mom until I grabbed my knife."

"What're you talking about?" Kris said.

She was holding the iron skillet. Joe took it from her; Sparrow squeaked and jumped to Frank's shoulder.

Kris blinked. "Fairy magic," she breathed. "The whole cave? _Wow."_

The double-image had gone away when Joe had grabbed the skillet; he handed the skillet back to Kris, and it came back, along with the eye-itching, as if the illusion tugged at his brain. "Maybe that's why they hate iron. It makes them see what's really there."

"But why?" Kris said. "It's _beautiful."_

Sparrow cautiously crawled from Frank's shoulder back to Joe. Something else occurred to Joe, something he'd dismissed at the time. "When we were getting out, that changeling said something weird. That we had the sun."

"Changeling?" Frank said.

Explaining that to Frank — his brother who argued over fairy tales to the point that Dad kept Frank away whenever Gramma started up — would take way too long, especially since Joe wasn't sure he understood it, either. "Never mind. But maybe they're stuck here. Maybe they really want the sun. They can't get it, so they pretend."

"Yeah," Frank said. "I wouldn't want to live here, either."

Kris looked out over the glowing cavern. "I would."

Joe stared. "But you wouldn't have snow. You wouldn't get to have any snowball fights. Or sleigh rides. Or cookies. Or climb trees!"

"Or swim in the ocean," Frank added. "Or eat lobster. Even if you do have to cover it up with a napkin."

Joe grinned. They'd done a lobster boil at the beach that past summer; Kris had refused to eat something that stared at her, until Joe solved the matter by dropping a napkin over the lobster's head. "And you wouldn't have _Christmas,"_ Joe said. "No presents. All you'd have are monsters like _that."_

She only shrugged.

"Oh come on," Frank said. "No way. That thing?"

"Monsters are monsters." Flat. Uncaring. "Don't matter whether they're down here or up there."

"There's no monsters up there," Frank said. "Not like that."

She looked at them for a long moment, then reached up, unbuttoned the top couple buttons of her flannel shirt and pulled the upper edge down, just enough for Joe and Frank to see right below her collarbone.

Joe bit his lip. A raised, raw-looking burn scar, reversed letters that spelled out "Jesus". _"Why?"_

Kris bowed her head. "Because I asked about Santa Claus." Then she glared up into Frank's face. "My mom said it was my Christmas present and I should be grateful because I was marked for Jesus. So don't tell me there's no monsters up there." Resentful. Sullen. "You're _lucky_ your mom's dead." She cut herself off, looked away.

Silence. Even Sparrow had quieted. Joe couldn't imagine it, couldn't wrap his head around any mom that would do something like that. No wonder she'd shrugged off that big bruise.

He'd yelled at Kris earlier about not caring about his brother dying. Maybe she'd never had a chance _to_ care…

"Real moms don't do stuff like that," Frank said, low, fierce. "Mar's your mom now. She's your _real _mom."

"You can be our sister, if you want," Joe offered. "Our annoying tagalong kid sister."

"I had a baby brother once." Low. Quiet. Wistful. "He died."

Joe and Frank looked at each other. Joe opened his mouth; the words got stuck. He swallowed, tried again, but a quip made it out instead. "Well, we're big brothers. We'll stick around."

"It's in the name," Frank said. "Hardy means _resilient._ It was on my vocabulary test last week," he added defensively, to Joe's eye-roll. But then he went back to staring out at the cavern, forehead scrunched and mouth a tight line.

"But…" Kris sounded confused, "but I…I mean…I got you into this."

"You whacked a monster trying to eat me," Joe said. "That kinda made up for it."

"Y'know," Frank said slowly, still staring at the cavern, "Click can get out. Why can't they?"

Joe sighed; trust his _everything-has-to-make-sense _brother to get sidetracked by that. "More important question. How do _we_ get out? I don't think they're going to let us walk over there."

"It is important, Joe," Frank said. "Dad said you have to look for reasons, too. Why they can't get out. Why that thing wanted you. It's all tied in. It has to be."

"The queen…" Kris swallowed, tried again. "The queen told me to come in here and get you out. Me and Clay threatened her with the zoo if she didn't."

Frank nodded at the searchers. "Somehow I don't think they got the message."

Something nagged at the back of Joe's head, something he'd seen, some Western where the cowboys were trapped and surrounded. "We need a distraction."

Frank gave him a look. "Don't you dare."

It had to be a rule somewhere that Older Brothers be as annoying as possible. "Not like _that — _wait a minute!" With that, Joe grabbed the flashlight from Frank and scrambled back down the tunnel, shining it around until he saw the large smooth rock with the yellow and white rocks powdered over it. Joe sniffed at one of the yellow ones; it smelled like a lit match, musty and acrid.

"Joe, don't!" Frank grabbed him before Joe could taste the white stuff. "Are you _crazy?_ You don't know —"

"It's saltpeter, I think," Joe said. "Settlers used it to preserve food. And this stuff, it's _sulfur."_

Frank blinked.

"Black powder," Joe said, grinning. "Boom."


	16. Situation

_**A/N: Thanks to Leyapearl & Stork Hardy for the reviews! See what happens when you leave a review? You get publicity! ;)**_

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_This isn't your boy._

Bad enough, his firstborn still missing, still in the hands of _those._ At first, Fenton hadn't believed it; no one could duplicate another person like that, no one. He had insisted on comparing the fingerprints with those he had on file for his sons…only to find that the fingertips of the boy in the bed were smooth. Printless.

But worse, discovering his baby boy and Mar's daughter both gone, the IV lines lying across the hospital beds and soaking the sheets with Ringer's lactate. Fenton didn't need any guesses to know what Joe was going to do, and being told to watch the house while another covered the likely destination was the hardest thing Fenton had ever done in his life.

Gertrude met him at the door, the dark circles under her eyes mirroring his: exhaustion, worry, fear. "Fenton, something odd happened. One of the cookie bags went missing. I turned my back for a second, and it was gone."

The cookies that Laura had always made for the boys. His sister had taken over that duty last year in an attempt to keep things as normal as possible for the boys during the holidays — not that anything could be normal again, with Laura gone. Fenton sighed. "Let me guess. Joe's."

His sister wasn't a fool. "He ran away from the hospital, didn't he? I told you to tell the nurses to watch him closely. He and Frank are far too sneaky to be left alone like that."

"Later, Gert," Fenton said, and headed up the stairs to the boys' bedroom. Just one thing to check — yes, Joe's bat was gone, the autographed Red Sox bat; the excitement on both boys' faces when they'd met the team was one of the best memories Fenton had. Joe had used the bat to kill 'Fred', the googly-eyed monster in the closet that now sat next to Joe's bed. Despite the situation, Fenton smiled; Laura had sewn Fred in secret, and managing to sneak the monster and the tape recorder into the boys' closet without them seeing had been a masterwork of Fenton's twenty-years-experience with the NYPD.

"You saw nothing? Heard nothing?" he said to Gertrude, who stood tapping her foot at the bottom of the stairs.

"Nothing at all," Gertrude said.

Odd. The stairs creaked in multiple spots, and Frank and Joe hadn't yet figured out the pattern. That Fenton had been aware of, anyway.

He went into his bedroom, pulled his .45 out of the lockbox, made sure of the ammo clip and the safety, then holstered it under his coat. Steel-jacketed bullets would mess up anyone's day, iron-hating Sidhe or not. "Stay here," he said, as he headed back out the door. "I'm checking with Mar."

Mar stood on her porch, locking her front door. She turned and spotted Fenton, came over. "Pots and pans all over my floor, and my cast iron skillet's missing. And the bread and peanut butter, and Kris's backpack."

Fenton sighed, rubbed at his forehead. "Morton's farm, then."

Mar cracked a smile. "I'd say that's a reasonable deduction."

"I'll drive." How they were going to explain this to the hospital — especially Frank. Especially that. Fenton was fairly certain that changelings weren't standard medical knowledge, and he wasn't about to follow the advice in the old tales on how to force the Sidhe to expose the changeling and give his son back. Especially not with a child, Sidhe or no.

Deal with it when they got to it. Fenton wasn't sure he could give the child back, either, not when the changeling was obviously ill and suffering. No parent deserved to _be_ a parent if they abandoned a child to that. Ever.

No cars at the Mortons' — they'd likely gone to visit relatives to get away from the idiotic news media. The house itself was lit with Christmas lights, the old Nativity scene out front. "I've got my gun," Fenton said quietly, as he and Mar headed through the woods; the trampled snow, litter, tree blazes and piled rocks made finding the hole far too easy. "If there's trouble, stay behind me."

"Fenton," Mar said, as she stooped to examine the hawthorne tree and the rope secured at its base, then swung over the side, "I have my own protections. Focus on your sons. This is Clay's — it's safe."

Given that she taught karate at the Y and was teaching both his sons archery — Frank already at orange belt and Joe highly excited over learning something "real Indian" — she was likely right. Fenton sighed again as he swung down after her on the rope. Habits died hard. "Sorry."

"No need," Mar said. "You've a warrior soul. You protect those who cannot protect themselves." Another smile. "Both your sons take after you, there."

Frank, definitely, but Joe? But then, Joe had beat the daylights out of Fred after the tape recorder had snarled out Frank's name. His gentle, stubborn baby boy…

Fenton put it aside. Focus. He shone his penlight around, then realized there was other light, shining from deep down another tunnel that led far back and down.

At the end of the tunnel was a large, glittering space of white rock, glistening with water and quartz. But Fenton's glare was only on the figure that stood opposite, haloed in light. Tall, graceful, imperious, female.

"Fenton, Mar." Clay stood near the tunnel. Something clung behind Clay's knees, something that peered up at Fenton with large dark eyes under a floppy leather hat.

It was one thing to discuss the Sidhe as an abstract reality, another to actually see them. But Fenton hadn't stayed with the NYPD for twenty years by being easily shocked. He kept his gaze on the real threat, the tall being; she stood in an archway, light pouring from the space…and a long pole half-in, half-out of the arch, blacking out a good portion of the light. "That's Click?" Fenton said to Clay.

"He won't hurt you, little buddy," Clay said; Fenton gave him a quick glance, realized Clay was talking to the brownie. "These two are your friends' parents."

The little brownie scowled.

"Well," Mar said. Calm. Even. She had her arms crossed, head cocked, every inch the Implacable Indian Warrior, staring down the woman in the light. "I have to admit, this is impressive. So you're the queen of the hive." She glanced at Clay. "The iron pole — Joe?"

"Yeah," Clay said. "Right before he took off into there. Your little foundling went after them."

Now Mar gave Clay a hard, hard stare, but Fenton didn't care. "I'm not impressed," Fenton said, and pulled his gun. He didn't see any of the children, anywhere. He would not panic. Panic played right into a criminal's hands. "We're here for the kids. Give them up, and we won't hurt you."

The woman stared at him, silent, as if Fenton, Mar and Clay were insects.

"Perhaps you Sidhe haven't kept up," Clay said pleasantly. "What this man holds is a gun. It shoots steel. Cold iron. What doesn't hit you will go right through that archway and mess up your day good."

"I'll give you five minutes," Fenton said to the woman. He didn't want to shoot, not yet. Not when he couldn't be sure exactly where the children were and his only information source stood between him and them.

Despite the light, despite the grace, something was odd about the woman's face. Fenton squinted, then realized her nose and eyes were bruised, swollen, and blood-spattered.

As if she'd been whacked with a bat.

"I know not where they are," the woman said coldly. "My people search. Be assured, the faster we remove them from my realm, the happier I will be."

"Then you'd better go direct that search," Fenton said. "Personally."

"You have a hard mind," the woman said; she was sniffling and too obviously trying to hide it. She cocked her head, as if considering. "You do your son no favors by forcing his return. He will be wasted in your world. Far better mine, where he would be taught, honored, and respected."

The federal agents had said the same thing. Fenton hadn't believed them, either. "Four minutes."

The woman scowled, then retreated through the glowing arch. Fenton started after her, only for Clay and Mar to stop him.

"The pole," Mar said quietly, nodding at the metal in the archway. "It's locking the doorway open. They can't close it until we remove it."

"You'd better be right," Fenton said, but settled back against the stone to wait.

Three minutes, and Fairyland would learn what an NYPD cop-turned-detective could do…


	17. Reunion

**_A/N: Thanks to Stork Hardy, LaurenHardy13, Leyapearl & SnowPrincess88 for the reviews! (see, you get publicity!) All my readers rock!_**

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His brother was a chatterbox, scatter-brain, and too eager to leap before looking…but when Joe was right, Frank had to admit, Joe was _really_ right. They used flat rocks to pound, smash, and grind the sulfur and saltpeter to powder, and dug charcoal out of the fire-pit to do the same — being very careful to keep the three separate. Frank remembered too well what had happened when they'd tried to make their own model-rocket engines that past summer.

All through it, the little one — Sparrow — jumped back and forth along their shoulders, watching with a curious, intent expression and crooning softly in a chirruping sing-song. It liked Joe the best; Sparrow perched on Joe's shoulder and head, tugged at his hair, and kept trying to get close to Joe's hands and the sulfur that Joe was grinding down.

"This stuff explodes?" Kris said. Her fingers were stained black with the charcoal; they'd given her that part, since it was the softest and easiest of the three to grind. She sneezed. "Stinks."

"Yup," Joe said cheerfully. "C'mon, Sparrow, stop it!" Joe scooped the little one up and placed it back on his shoulder; it'd gotten too close to his hands again. Just like a cat, Sparrow immediately jumped off Joe's shoulder and went back to watching Joe's hands. "Wait 'til you get Mr. Mack for science. Sift it together, wet it down…oh. Um..."

Mr. Mack had a reputation for 'practical' lessons that would shake, smoke, stink, and light up the building…and the reason for far too many fire drills at the school. With a sigh, Frank sat back. Yeah. 'Um.' _Now_ Joe thought of that. "I don't think Coke'll work."

Joe went red. "Mr. Mack used…um…pee. It makes a bigger boom."

"Don't look at me," Kris said.

Joe wasn't about to slough it off on him, either. Frank grinned at his brother. "It was your idea."

That earned him a really dirty look, but then Joe sighed, pushed to his feet, scouted around the chamber, picked up a crude clay bowl and went over to the far side of the room. To Joe's open annoyance, Sparrow insisted on following him…and giggling.

"We don't need much." Frank was never going to let Joe live this one down. "Just enough to make this stuff like Play-doh." Frank glanced at Kris; the look on her face was awesomely disgusted. His day was definitely looking up. "You'll have to use your fingers to mix it."

At that, she backed away.

"Nuh-uh," Frank said cheerfully. "You got us into this. You're not getting out of it."

"Just think of it like water, tagalong." Joe came back with the bowl cradled gingerly in his hands, Sparrow clinging to his shoulder. "Stinky yellow water."

"How come boys are always so gross?"

"Same reason you girls make a big deal over stuff," Frank said, grinning again. No, definitely not going to let either of them live it down, ever.

His handkerchief got sacrificed to the cause, as did a piece of Joe's shirt, cut with Frank's knife; they dumped all the clumps and powder into the cloth and tied them off with the greasy hair cord. "We'll need your flash paper," Joe said to Kris, who was wiping her fingers on her jeans, over and over. "It's the same stuff as gun-cotton. Friction ignites it."

"Flash paper?"

"Kris, c'mon," Frank said patiently. "We know you have some. It's how you do the light."

She looked down. "How much fire do you need?"

"Not much," Joe said. "Just a couple sheets. I'll replace it when we're home, scout's honor."

"Joe got some from the Houdini Store," Frank said. "You should've seen him scare Aunt Gertrude." They'd been trying to duplicate Kris's light, but neither he nor Joe had been able to figure out how to get the paper to look like her light trick, even when they'd tried several stacks at once. The resulting flash, smoke, screaming, and blaring fire alarm in the kitchen had resulted in Aunt Gertrude spraying the entire vicinity with the fire extinguisher, then explaining to Chief Collig why she'd called the police and fire departments over a little smoke. Totally, completely worth it, though Dad had banned all future experiments to the back patio, and only when he was around to supervise.

"You mean, like sparks?"

What part of this wasn't she getting? "Well, yeah."

"C'mon," Joe wheedled. "It's not a secret. The guy at the store showed us how to do it. No big deal."

"He _showed_ you?" Kris was openly confused. "If you can do it, why don't you? You just have to be able to see it, that's all."

Joe opened his mouth, shut it; Frank just looked at her. Great, now both he and Joe were confused, too.

Kris looked from Frank to Joe, opened her own mouth, then looked back down. "I can spark it. Just make sure I can still see it."

"'Annoying tagalong' is right," Frank said to Joe. "Kris, we need the _paper."_

"I _said_ I can spark it."

Now wasn't the time to pretend her tricks were real. Frank opened his mouth — but whatever he'd been about to say cut off hard.

Noise, from the other tunnel. Scrapes, footsteps, chiming voices.

Panicked, all three stared wildly around the room; Frank shoved Kris and Joe over behind a mound of other rocks and the crumbled pile of busted cages, then clicked the flashlight off. Darkness came back, chill, scary, uncertain. Frank listened hard, aware of Joe and Kris flattened next to him, gulping air, all three trying to be quiet and still.

The voices grew louder. Light flickered into the cavern, casting moving, misshapen shadows on the ceiling and walls.

Sudden, dead silence.

Then the voices started again, all at once, loud, excited, agitated…and getting closer. Before they could stop her, Kris grabbed one of the bundles of black powder, hurled it towards the other tunnel —

It burst mid-air into a huge fireball of smoke and flame.

The voices shrieked. Footsteps ran, scraping, staggering panicked sounds that faded, and then, farther off, the voices yelled, screamed, faint echoes through the rock.

"Move!" Frank said, coughing.

They snatched up the other bundle and the backpack and fled up the second tunnel, back out onto the concealed ledge. Gripping Joe's shoulder for support, Frank clenched his jaw around sharp pain; his left ankle was swollen and painful, but they didn't dare stop. They couldn't stay on the ledge; they couldn't. These people now knew something was wrong, would definitely decide to investigate and find the other tunnel —

"How'd you _do _that?" Joe demanded at Kris.

"I _told_ you!"

"Cut it out," Frank snapped. "We need to get off this ledge before they figure it out — Sparrow, stop it!"

Chittering excitedly, the little one tugged at the remaining bundle, trying to pull it out of Frank's hands.

"Let him," Kris whispered. "I think…" Her forehead scrunched; she reached a tentative hand to touch Sparrow's. Sparrow stilled, then chittered again, slow and deliberate.

"Aerial assault," Joe said suddenly.

"Something like that," Kris said. "I can't get all of it — it's not very clear."

Frank released his grip. She'd been able to understand Click, somehow, before. Maybe these people had some way of making themselves understood.

Sparrow patted his hand, then grabbed the bundle and took off, a swift blink-and-miss-it streak of wing and grace darting through the cavern and dropping the bundle just inside a dark cubbyhole a ways out. Few of the bigger beings noticed the little one; those that did barely glanced at the movement and shrugged it off.

"Now we just need him to get one of those torches," Frank said as the little one landed on Joe's shoulder and perched there, chittering and tugging at Joe's hair; Kris was peering over the rock, staring hard towards the bundle. "But he'll get seen — the fire'll get him —"

The sound wasn't _WHUMPF. _The _experience_ was _**WHUMPF.**_

Sparrow shrieked and took off as they flattened themselves against the ledge. The ground shook. Yells, screams. Rock, dirt, and debris pelted down. Frank peered up over the edge. Where the bundle had been was now a huge, blackened, gaping maw of fiery burning rock, thick smoke, shattered stalactites and stalagmites. Beings running towards it, shrieking, yelling.

"Mine gas," Frank said, awed. "It must've hit a pocket. It's why miners had canaries with them."

"Who _cares?"_ Joe shoved to his feet. _"Run!"_

Together, Joe and Kris helped Frank up; Kris was holding her head as if it hurt, squinting against the light. With Joe helping him, Frank was able to limp fairly fast, and they ran towards the rise of white rock, hit the foot of it and scrambled up — no one paid any attention to three more running figures in the chaos.

Until they reached the top.

Frank backed up fast, his jackknife out and arms spread to block whatever these things were from getting Joe. Beside him, Kris hefted the skillet, her face scrunched in a scowl that would have had him laughing, but now…

The woman, the tall, graceful light, stood there, blocking the way.

"We killed your monster." Joe brandished his bat. "We blew your place up. We'll do it again. We've got tons more fire."

The woman only stared down at them. Cold. Silent. Unmoving.

"Some queen you are," Frank said. Behind her was an archway; beyond that, a dark space. A black iron pole lay half in, half out of the archway. "Your place blows up, and all you care about is getting three kids."

Behind him, Joe grabbed for the backpack and yanked out the jar of peanut butter. "Let us go," he held up the jar as if to throw it, "or you won't have a cave left."

"Zoo," Kris added, hefting the skillet. "Monkeys."

Kris was getting weird, and his brother had just confessed to chaos, explosives, and monster-murder to the person who claimed to be in charge. Obviously Frank had to be the brains here. "They'll know where we're at," he said reasonably. Calm. Even. "Our dad won't give up. He's a detective. He'll figure it out and he'll come after you —"

"He already knows," Joe broke in. "Me and Kris told him."

"— and he'll have the whole FBI and the NYPD and Chief Collig with him," Frank finished. "That's _our_ law. They won't care about yours."

"And the CIA," Joe added, "and the Army. Dad was in intelligence. They'll come in with nukes and choppers and the Rangers and the Red Sox and you'll never get 'em out of here until you let us go."

For someone who loved Westerns, Little Brother was awful at bluffing. Trying not to laugh, Frank scowled.

"Or we'll just beat your face in," Joe said.

Still silent, the tall graceful light moved aside.

Frank didn't move. It had to be another trick. She'd made such a point of getting them…

"Stick to the iron," Kris whispered. "They can't touch it."

Frank still didn't move, staring hard at the woman. "Why Joe? Why my brother? Why do you want him?"

Oh, that smile. Frank backed up, stumbled as his ankle throbbed and gave way under his weight, bumped into Joe. But the woman's gaze moved past him, focused on his brother. "You will be wasted," she said softly. Slow. Chilling. "Throw your lot in with your own, child. You will have long to regret it."

Frank exchanged a swift glance with Joe. "He's my brother," Frank said. "I'll always believe him."

"And your curse is useless," Kris said. "He's holding ash."

"Stupid child," the woman said coldly. "You do not even know the difference between rowan and ash."

There was a pause. Frank saw Kris and Joe look at each other. "A bat's a bat," Joe said to the woman. "I still beat you up."

"Yes," the woman said, with another chilling smile. "You did."

Uh-oh. Frank moved closer to Joe, saw Kris do the same, hefting the iron skillet up.

"My memory is long," the woman said softly, "my vengeance longer." Her gaze fixed on Joe. "You will see, yet never be believed. Trouble will dog your steps the rest of your days, and your people will do you no honor, your gift disbelieved, your heart torn, your talents useless —"

"Joe's not the only one who can beat your face in," Kris said, raising the skillet.

The woman ignored that. "Go, then. I rejoice to see the backs of you."

Keeping a wary eye on the woman, Frank pushed Joe towards the arch. "You first."

But the woman only stood there, unmoving, as all three crossed through the archway, stepping on the iron pole as they did. Frank clenched his jaw around the pain, his ankle on fire, but he was not about to show that to the insane woman, not until they were clear, not until his brother was safe —

"_Dad!" _

Joe was already running, and next thing Frank knew, he was swept up in Dad's arms, a long, tight hug that crushed both him and Joe in a breathless squeak. The jackknife dropped, but Frank didn't care, didn't care that he was crying, that Dad was crying…

But then Dad did something odd. He pulled away, took Frank's hand up, and looked hard at Frank's fingertips.

"He's real, Dad," Joe's voice broke, face tear-streaked. "He's really real. He's got his jackknife, he's not a changeling —"

"I know," Dad said, and pulled both Frank and Joe into another hug.

The light suddenly dimmed; Frank blinked back tears, looked around in surprise. The arch of light was gone. A huge man in Army camo dragged the iron pole to lay cross-wise against the wall where the arch had been, then picked up a flashlight from the ground.

"That's Clay," Joe said, his voice muffled against Dad's shoulder. "Mom sent him."

"Mom?" Frank stared. Mar was hugging Kris, talking in low tones to her and rocking her back and forth. The man came over, gave both Frank and Joe an easy salute. Frank stared up; 'huge' was an understatement.

"Corporal Clay Wilson, First Army Ranger Company," the man said. "What's wrong with your leg, buddy?"

"He served with Uncle Jack in Korea," Joe added.

Great, Joe was wound up. There'd be no shutting him up for hours now. "I twisted my ankle, sir," Frank said, not letting go of Dad. He wasn't trusting _anyone_ from now on unless Dad said so.

Clay laughed. "I'm not a _sir_, I work for a living. Fenton, mind me carrying him? We shouldn't stick around. That pole'll block 'em here, but I'll lay bets they've got other ways."

Dad gave Frank another tight squeeze. "Yeah," Dad sighed. "He's too big for me to carry. Go on, Frank. We need to get you boys back to the hospital."

Back? But he'd never been…Frank looked from Dad to Clay to Mar, then decided that questions could wait. He was exhausted and starved and really needed to use the bathroom again.

Movement caught his eye. Clinging to Clay's leg — Click. The little elf was scowling at Joe, at Kris.

Frowning, Clay had knelt to examine Frank's ankle briefly. "You're definitely not walking on it, bud. Bad sprain, at least." Clay shook his head. "C'mon, I won't drop you."

Then Click chittered something, sharp, loud, and Frank saw both Kris and Joe start.

"Click, we didn't have a choice!" Joe said. "We thought Frank was dying, they needed to know what was going on, and Clay promised to help you, it was just Dad and Mar —"

Another sharp chitter, and this time, clear, angry: _You promised._

Wait, _dying?_ But before Frank could open his mouth, Click _moved._ Big sad eyes loomed too close to Frank's face — and a dry, leathery hand slapped his forehead before he could jerk away.

Blackness.


	18. Adoption

**_A/N: Thanks to Stork Hardy, Leyapearl, SnowPrincess88 for the reviews! All my readers rock - and hey, leaving a review is easy, and I can see I've got lots of readers by the stats. Just type "hi" into the box below the story, put your pen name in the fields, hit "post", and let me see you! ;)_**

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Kris barely grabbed the skillet back up in time, just as Click jumped for her. The little brownie pulled up short, then fled, out of reach, out of sight, back up the tunnel and gone before any of the adults could react.

Both Frank and Joe had collapsed. Kris stood there, shaking as she clutched the skillet, as the adults converged on the brothers.

_You promised. You broke your promise._

"Get them out," Fenton said, lifting Joe in his arms as Clay hefted Frank up. Neither brother stirred. "Now."

"Move, little squirrel." Mar gave Kris a gentle push. Calm, as usual, but then Kris spotted the gun in Mar's other hand.

No. Not Click. _Not._ _Not!_

Kris trembled so hard she could barely stand, tears blurring her eyes. She'd trusted him. She'd _trusted_ him!

The hours passed in an exhausted, weary blur. A lot of yelling, doctors, nurses, police, Fenton, Mar, Clay and angry hospital staff, all of which ended with Frank and Joe in the same hospital room and a police guard right outside their door. Exhaustion, the doctors said. Exhaustion, exposure, and starvation, nothing more.

But Kris saw the look pass between Mar, Fenton and Clay. Something had been decided. Something that adults would never tell kids, no matter how much they begged. Adults always had secrets, and this was going to be one of them.

Mar refused to let the hospital admit Kris, insisted on Kris coming home. _That_ resulted in Kris clinging shyly to Mar's side as Mar and Clay pushed past a huddle of agitated nurses and aides to check on the changeling in ICU.

The bed was empty, save for a swirl of dried oak leaves, mud, and a scatter of white pebbles.

"Get her home," Clay said quietly to Mar, with a glance towards the huddle outside the door. "I'll take care of it."

Kris was too tired, exhausted, and hungry herself to ask what he meant, or to care. Mar drove Kris home, then sat Kris down at their kitchen table and stood over her while she inhaled a bowl of homemade chicken noodles. Afterwards, Mar insisted on a bath (warm, _warm!)_, then put Kris straight to bed.

The house was dark and quiet, save for the ticking of the old clock on her dresser, a second-hand chest of drawers painted white and with one side now covered in scratch-and-sniff stickers. Kris hadn't stayed in the bed, though. Too exposed. Too open. Too _not-safe. _Restless, worried for Frank and Joe, Kris circled the room, checked the door and windows. Salt and iron nails had been scattered over the sills, with bright green holly strung along the upper edge in a cheery garland.

Mar had to have done that. It wasn't enough. It just wasn't. Finally, Kris dragged all the covers, blankets, quilt, and pillows into her closet and mounded them up into a warm, comforting nest that she burrowed into, blocking the door shut with her body and the pillows.

There. Safe. Even her original parents had trouble getting into her closet when she'd blocked it like this. Those rare moments of safety usually only delayed the inevitable, because sooner or later, she _had_ to go to the bathroom or attempt to sneak to the kitchen to eat, and they'd be waiting, if they hadn't drunk themselves unconscious first…

"Squirrel?"

Kris jolted awake. Sunlight filtered through the space between closet doors and wall. That late already? Kris slid the door open a crack, peeped out.

Mar stood at the bedroom door, nodded when she saw Kris peering out. "Come on downstairs when you're ready," Mar said gently. "You might want to wash up again — Fenton invited us over for Christmas lunch."

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Kris pulled the closet door open a little more. "Frank and Joe? They're okay?"

Mar smiled. "They're home. Gert insisted she could take care of them better than Bayport General, and Fenton wasn't about to let his boys spend Christmas in a hospital." Mar's smile widened. "The nurses couldn't get them out of there fast enough. Something about Frank and Joe following the night shift around all the rooms."

Yeah. Kris could definitely see them doing that. Joe had followed Mar around for three days, back when Kris and Mar had moved in, and pestered her with continual questions about what "real Indians" did. Mar had gotten him to plant two rows of corn and one of potatoes in the new garden as a "traditional Navajo rite of spring" before Joe finally caught on.

Another bath — water as hot as she could stand it, and Kris dumped half a bottle of Mr. Bubble in — and in the pile of clean clothes Mar left outside the door, topmost was a new gray sweatshirt emblazoned with the bright-red guitar-shaped Monkees logo. Kris loved the show and the goofy musicians. It'd become a Saturday afternoon ritual, eating grilled cheese and tomato soup with Frank and Joe in the living room while The Monkees and Scooby-Doo blared on the TV. Kris didn't understand half the jokes, but the music made her happy, even when Joe sang along — though Frank always covered his ears.

"Kris?" Mar called up, from the bottom of the stairs. "Come down to the kitchen, please."

Uh-oh. She'd relaxed too soon. Lecture time, definitely: running away from the hospital and blowing up a fairy cave were probably not on Mar's list of approved stuff. Slowly, tentatively, Kris went down the carpeted stairs and back through the archway to the kitchen; outside, more snow swirled past the windows. She stopped in the middle of the archway.

Official-looking papers were spread on the kitchen table.

"Come look," Mar said, smiling.

Still slowly, wondering, Kris went over to the table, picked up the first paper. _Voluntary Termination of Parental Rights…?_

"Fenton tracked them down last month," Mar said quietly. "He got them to cave in pretty quick. I don't know the full details and don't want to know." She picked up another document, put it into Kris's hands. "Here. This one."

A birth certificate for — Kris looked up into Mar's face. For _'Kris Yanaba Mountainhawk,' _issue date that past Friday, the day of the Mortons' party.

_Mother: Maria Tse Mountainhawk._

Kris's hands shook. She looked back down at the table. Certificate of Adoption, finalized the same day. Social Security card and paperwork. Doctor's records from San Francisco, attesting to probable age. The social worker had been by a couple weeks ago for a long interview with Kris, but Kris hadn't paid much attention to what it meant; it'd been a year since she'd run away from her original parents. A whole year. She felt dizzy; she couldn't think, couldn't focus. The first thing to mind made it out. "Yanaba?"

Mar smiled again. "The court was pretty insistent on a middle name, and I knew you didn't know. It means 'brave'." She tapped the birth certificate. "This means you're now officially eleven years old."

That had been a problem. As far as anyone had been able to determine, there was no birth certificate on record for Kris, and it was one of the reasons that Kris had ended up behind everyone else in school. Kris looked at the paper again. The birth date listed was also that past Friday, eleven years ago. "Mar…"

"Happy belated birthday," Mar laid an arm around Kris's shoulders, a gentle, emphatic hug, "and _Ya'át'ééh Késhmish."_

Tears stung her eyes. "Joe said that," Kris whispered, "to Click." She swallowed, got the other words out. "What's…what's the word for 'mother'?"

Silence. Then, "_Amá,"_ Mar said quietly.

"_Amá." _It caught in her throat, and Kris tried again. "_Amá." _Then, suddenly, overwhelmed, she flung her arms around Mar.

"_Shiché'é,"_ Mar said, hugging her tight, rocking her slowly back and forth. Silence came back, a warm, comfortable quiet, which Mar finally broke. "C'mon. They're expecting us. You can carry the cornbread."

Kris wiped at her face. "Cornbread?" Such a big moment. Such a little, warm, homey detail. It fit. It fit wonderfully.

"They have relatives over," Mar said calmly. She handed Kris a large covered basket, then pulled a casserole dish from the oven; the sweet scent of corn-bake casserole steamed up from the dish. "The doctors don't want the boys traveling just yet, so the family horde decided to descend on them instead."

Which meant Frank and Joe were captives of something they probably thought far worse than the fairy queen: their grandmothers' story-telling.

Now Mar grinned, impish. "Guess you get to rescue the boys again."


	19. Consequences

**A/N: thanks to Stork Hardy & LaurenHardy13 for the reviews!**

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_Christmas Eve, Bayport General_

Fenton sprawled in the orange pleather chair in the hospital room, trying not to fall asleep, watching his sons. The nurses had moved in a cot, had urged him to get some sleep, but Fenton stuck to the uncomfortable chair. He wanted to be awake when his boys woke up. He wanted them to know that their father was with them. That they weren't alone.

Mar had taken her little foundling home. Fenton knew of the surprise that Mar had planned for Christmas — she'd originally planned it for when the kids got back from the Mortons' party, before it'd been interrupted — and wished he could be there to see the girl's face. He'd met Kris's original parents; he'd hunted them down and gotten them to 'voluntarily' sign the waiver of parental rights.

Fenton smiled grimly at the memory. The only thing voluntary about it had been them holding the pen. They'd babbled a lot, trying to justify their actions. Too much. Far too much. There were a lot of words Fenton had wanted to use on them in return — assault, battery, murder, manslaughter, eradication — unfortunately, all illegal.

He shifted in the chair. Frank had woken up earlier, only to drift back off from sheer exhaustion. From what little Frank had said, he didn't remember anything of what had happened. Fenton had soothed him, had reassured him that Joe was okay, had held his son's hand until Frank had fallen back asleep.

No, Fenton wasn't going to leave them. After what had happened to the changeling, he wasn't about to take any chances.

"Fenton?" Clay poked his head in, gave the room a quick once-over, then came fully in. "I'm heading back to Boston. My wife'll kill me if I miss our baby's first Christmas."

Laura had made the same threat for Frank and Joe's Christmases, every year. "Give her a year's worth of diaper-changes," Fenton said. "She'll forgive you."

Though in his case, it had turned into _two_ years of diaper-changing, when Laura found herself pregnant with Joe: unplanned, unexpected, and definitely a surprise. Raising one baby while pregnant with another — both boys had driven her nuts from day zero, and Laura hadn't forgiven her husband until after Joe had been born. Fenton still carried that picture in his wallet: baby Frank curled against Laura's side in the maternity bed as Laura cuddled Joe, Frank grabbing at his newborn brother's foot, both mouths open, Frank squealing with laughter, Joe voicing loud frustration at the world and whoever the foot-grabber was…

"Already did. Still not off the hook." Clay pulled something from his pocket, handed it to Fenton: two shoulder patch-insignias of the First Ranger Battalion. "Give these to 'em when they wake up. I got the story from the girl. All three of 'em deserve it." He grinned. "The only kids in the world to blow up Fairyland."

The door cracked open again: Mar. Fenton gestured her in. "Gertrude's watching her for a bit," Mar said quietly, as she handed a brown paper bag to Fenton. "She said to make sure the boys got these."

The bag was sealed with a green Christmas bow. Fenton didn't have to look: Laura's special Christmas cookies. His sister had taken over making them last year; his boys had always insisted on leaving a share out for Santa, had always fallen asleep in front of the fireplace, waiting to catch Santa in the act, only to wake up to a tree loaded with presents.

"We should've taken Gert with us to confront the queen, I swear," Mar was saying. "She said she'll come get you in the morning, Fenton. Clay, you better get going. It's snowing again."

"Just my luck," Clay said, but he was smiling. He clasped Fenton's hand, then gave Mar a quick hug. "Come up tomorrow, if you can, Mama Hawk. Everyone's gonna want to hear the story."

"We will," Mar said, and Clay left.

Fenton sighed. The story. Right.

"You've got that look," Mar said. "The _I-need-to-make-a-bad-decision-as-a-parent_ look."

He glanced towards his sons' beds. Fast asleep. Still, no sense in taking chances, not around his over-curious, over-sneaky, over-intelligent sons. He nodded towards the door and let Mar precede him into the hallway and over to the small visitor area right across from his sons' room. Still within eye-shot, though hopefully out of earshot of the Bayport's Finest standing guard.

Fenton found Mar comfortable to talk to. She had an older son in the Air Force stationed in 'Nam; she'd helped raise her sisters' kids on the reservation. She was calm, endlessly patient, and never shocked — Fenton had no idea what he'd done to deserve her moving in next door, but he wished he could do it again.

"Frank doesn't remember," Fenton said quietly, without preamble. "Probably safe to say Joe won't, either, if that was what Click did." He sighed. "So much for him being their friend."

"According to Kris, Click accused them of breaking their promise." Mar handed Fenton a cup of coffee from the nurses' station, sat down opposite him. "That's the problem with the Sidhe. They're quick to take offense, and they never forgive. And they have long memories."

Fenton blew out a breath. That left a problem. A big one. The Sidhe woman's words had been deeply troubling. He swirled the coffee around in the styrofoam cup, watching the patterns the creamer made. "You and Clay. You both knew of the Sidhe. You spotted the changeling. You knew how to deal with them. You didn't freak out in the cave." He looked up, met her calm gaze. "That means you've done this before."

"You didn't freak, either." Still calm. Quiet.

"NYPD. A glowing woman's nothing."

Her mouth quirked. "Be grateful for your inexperience."

"Mar…"

"I know what you're asking," Mar said. "Yes. We have."

The truth. No more, no less. Fenton looked at her. Waiting.

She only returned the gaze. Her usual calm, with just a hint of something else. As if daring him to ask.

No. He didn't want to know. Not yet, anyway. She wasn't a federal agent, of that much he was certain, and that was all he cared about. The creamer in his coffee floated in little clumps. "Can you break it? I don't know what to call it — whatever Click did."

Silence.

Fenton looked back up at her. "Well?"

"Your real question," Mar said quietly. "Do you want me to?"

The _of course_ rose automatically, but Fenton held it back. He knew better. Easy answers were rarely the right ones. He didn't answer, waiting.

"There's a rule we run on," Mar went on. Quiet. Calm. "To be aware of your choice. To beware refusing it."

Fenton still waited. Patience was a hard-won skill, from his years with the NYPD. He wondered about that "we", decided to let it slide, for now.

"The first part. To be aware. The cost of your decision. The consequences. Whether you're willing to pay it and live with those consequences, you and those around you."

He nodded. His sons. His over-curious, over-intelligent sons who wanted to be detectives "just like Dad," who latched onto any seeming mystery like bloodhounds on trail. "They'd never let it rest," Fenton said slowly, "if they remembered."

He could see it. Dear God, he could see it. Danger and mystery tended to draw any boy like a magnet. _His _sons? They'd never let it go. They'd keep going back to the woods, to that cave, driven by curiosity, by the truth, by the mystery. Seeking out more mystery, more danger, more _truth._

His sons. Laura's legacy. All he had left of her.

"Beyond them," Mar said. "Their friends. If Frank and Joe tell them what happened…" Her voice trailed off.

She didn't need to say it. Fenton knew it. His sons could keep secrets. But this? Something as public as this had been, with all their friends wanting to help, with all their friends' parents involved in the search, with everyone knowing part of the story and wanting the rest. The pressure for Frank and Joe to tell the story would be incredible…and his sons didn't lie. All it would take would be for them to tell the story once…to their friends, whom they trusted…

Bad enough if those friends laughed it off and thought Frank and Joe were just making things up. Worse, if their friends believed them…or if his sons decided to _prove_ the truth to them. More kids, seeking out the Sidhe. No. _No._

Worse, far worse, if those federal agents got wind of the real story…

_He will be wasted in your world_.

Fenton dropped his gaze back to the coffee cup. "I can't lie to my sons. Lies are too easily found out."

"There's lying," Mar said, "and there's not telling all the truth. You know that."

He did. "And Kris?

Now Mar looked away. "I'll talk to her." Quieter, "Those SOBs taught her to keep quiet. To not trust anyone. But I'll never be grateful for the lessoning."

Decisions. Choices. Consequences. Fenton looked towards his sons' room, the police guard chatting with an aide outside their door. His sleeping sons. All he had left of Laura.

Dear God, let him be making the right choice. Fenton exhaled, slow, long, deep. "Then let it rest."


	20. Recovery

_**A/N: Hope everyone had a happy Easter & got lots of goodies! Thanks to Stork Hardy & Leyapearl here, and JD, Copagirl, & Rokia of HardyDetectiveAgency . com for the reviews (shameless plug: even more great stories and a wonderful fan community over there)!**_

* * *

Joe drifted awake. The room was dark, filled with strange shadows and smelling of stringent bleach and Pine-sol, the walls painted with goofy-looking Sesame Street characters, the silence broken only by quiet, steady beeps. For a long, sleepy while, Joe only lay staring at the walls without really seeing them, at the bottle of clear liquid suspended above his bed, at the long skinny tube trailing down to his tape-wrapped arm. Then he yawned; something was taped across his face. He put a hand up: a tube that blew air up his nose.

Now Joe bolted up. Hospital. This was a hospital room. What…where…_why…?_

_Frank! _

But Frank was asleep in the other bed. Similar tubes and several wires led from his chest to a green cathode monitor — then Joe realized that he also had wires attached to adhesive patches, with another monitor by his bed. He was bandaged in various spots and everything either itched or ached, but other than that, nothing seemed to be wrong. He glanced back at his brother; Frank's left foot was in a cast and propped up on pillows.

Dad wasn't in the room. Maybe Dad didn't know. Maybe Joe and Frank had been kidnapped by secret agents to get them to spill whatever secrets they knew about Dad — maybe they were being held hostage. Maybe it was some Commie plot, and they'd already started torturing Frank!

"Joe?" His brother stirred, blinked at him sleepily.

"Frank!" Joe started to slide off the bed, only to be stopped by the wires on his chest — a very short tether. Joe scowled, studying both wires and beeping monitor. It looked like the EKG machines on Aunt Gertrude's soap operas, but with secret agents, it could be _anything. _Easy enough to peel the adhesive patches off, then Joe slid out of bed and over to his brother.

Frank struggled to sit up, but no sooner had Joe plopped down on Frank's bed than a plump, gray-haired woman in scrubs ran into the room, only to stop on seeing Joe.

"Back in bed right now, young man." The woman came over and took Joe firmly by the arm.

Crossing his arms, scowling back, Joe resisted the pull. Name, rank, and serial number, that was the drill in the movies, though he had no clue what they meant by 'serial number'. Maybe the spies wouldn't, either. "Joe Hardy, private…um…eight five-one-three." The Yaz's number and batting average, but spies wouldn't know that.

There was a confused pause.

Joe's scowl deepened to a glare at the nurse. "That's all you're getting out of me."

Frank burst out laughing. "Joe, you goof. This is a _hospital."_

"_So?_ Commies have hospitals, too!"

"Definitely no more pain meds for you," the nurse said dryly. "Come on. Back to bed."

At that point, Dad burst into the room, pulled up short, took in Joe, the wires, and the nurse. "I should've known."

"Back. To. Bed," the nurse said, more firmly, to Joe. "We need to get the EKG back on you."

"You're fighting a losing battle," Dad said to her. "Just leave it off, or you'll be running in and out of here all night."

Maybe they'd been kidnapped _with_ Dad. "I didn't tell 'em anything, Dad," Joe said.

"Did, too," Frank said, straight-faced. "The Yaz's batting average is definitely a state secret."

"Elsie, let me talk to them," Dad said.

The woman gave Joe a stern look, but nodded. "I'll check with the doctor about the EKG."

Dad waited until the nurse left and the door shut. "Okay," Dad said quietly, "you haven't told them anything about what?"

Joe opened his mouth, then shut it. That was probably an important point. "Um…everything."

"Don't look at me," Frank said to him. "You're the one who revealed all the state secrets."

Joe glared. "Big help you are."

"Joe, do you know where you are?" Dad said. Slow. Careful.

It was Dad's _'You've missed some major important detail'_ voice. Joe looked around the room. Now that he thought about it, Russians probably wouldn't paint pictures of Grover and Kermit the Frog all over their walls. "A hospital."

"Bayport General," Frank said. "That nurse was Callie's aunt, Mr. Observant."

"Like I keep track of your _girlfriends."_

"_She's not my—"_

"_Boys,"_ Dad overrode them, but he was smiling. "Go look out the window, Joe. You'll see."

With another dirty look at his brother, Joe went over to the dark window and peered through the blinds. The moon was a thin waning sliver, high in the cloudless sky. Bayport spread out below the window, myriads of multi-colored Christmas lights in a chaos of lines and patterns…and there was their house, framed in the clunky red and blue lights — Mom's favorite colors — with the goofy plastic Santa blinking on the front stoop.

"Back to bed," Dad said, hand on Joe's shoulder. "You two had a rough time. We'll get you out of here in the morning."

"But what happened?"

Dad pulled the room's chair over between the beds; the orange pleather made squeaky fart sounds as Dad sat down. "What do you remember?"

Confused, Joe glanced at his brother…and saw something odd. A strand of Frank's hair was twisted into a thin braid threaded through a white bead.

Something about that was familiar. Something hazy, something about a cave…

"We were at Chet's," Joe said slowly. "The Christmas party." In his mind, he was running through dark woods, through deep snow, after…what? "We…fell."

"A cave," Frank whispered. "Fire."

One clear memory suddenly surfaced. "A woman. She looked like…" Joe swallowed, hard. "She looked like Mom."

That got far too long a silence. Joe bowed his head. He should've kept his mouth shut.

"It's okay, Joe." Dad squeezed Joe's hand, did the same to Frank's. "You were kidnapped. You two and Kris."

"_Kidnapped?" _ Something that exciting, and he'd missed it? Joe couldn't remember anything like that, nothing at all. Only the woman. "Why?"

"Kris's parents!" Frank said excitedly. "Mar was scared they'd try to grab her —"

"Mar told you that?" Dad said, eyebrow raised.

Frank glanced at Joe. "Um, no, you see, I —"

"_We."_ Joe wasn't about to let his brother get in trouble alone.

"— we were — I mean, you and Mar were talking and — and…well…we kind of overheard."

Dad sighed.

"It has to be them," Joe said hurriedly, before Dad could get distracted by yet another thing adults seemed to always get upset about. "They grabbed Kris and took us so we wouldn't tell!"

"We don't know that," Dad said gently. "It might've been that she was with _you._ You three were gone a week. The doctor thinks you were drugged."

"A _week?" _Joe said, horrified. "We missed _Christmas?"_

"You didn't." Now Dad was smiling. "It's Christmas Eve."

Joe stared at Dad, not believing. That long, and he couldn't remember? Then something struck him, something about Dad's voice: careful, gentle, slow. Dad was _scared._

Well, if it was Kris's original parents — oh no. _No._

"Joe?" Dad said.

Joe looked down at his own bandages, at his brother's casted foot. All those scary, sickening, nightmare-inducing case studies…

"Is Kris okay?" Frank said, before Joe could get the words out.

"She's fine." Still gentle. Slow. Careful. "She's home already."

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. "Dad," Joe said in a small voice, "if…if it was her parents, won't they keep trying? I mean, if they…if they did that…" He couldn't stop staring at Frank's cast.

"Stop." Dad hadn't let go of either of their hands. "No, Joe. That was the first thing we checked." The gentle, careful tone turned emphatic. "_Those people are not here._ Captain McGuire checked with SFPD, and Mar called in favors with friends out there. They are not in Bayport."

McGuire was Dad's former boss on the NYPD. Dad wouldn't lie to them, not over something like this; he'd want them to be on the lookout. Still, _someone_ had grabbed them. Someone had done that to Frank's foot…

Dad laid two brown paper bags on the night-table between the beds. "Mar's peanut butter sandwiches. Your aunt sent the cookies. I'll go see if I can scare up some milk for you."

"Hot chocolate?" Joe said hopefully, and Dad laughed as he left.

Mar's peanut butter was nothing like the Jiffy that all their friends used: thick, chunky, mixed with honey, and spread on fat slices of toasted homemade wheat bread. Something tickled the side of Joe's face as he ate — a feather, he discovered. A thin braid like Frank's, with a feather woven into it.

Frank touched his white stone. "Dad said they were there when they found us."

Joe fingered the braid. He wasn't about to undo it, not yet. That was what Dad always said: never disturb evidence until the police were done.

"It makes no sense," Frank said. "If it wasn't Kris's parents, then who? _Why?"_

Another mystery. But all the ideas they came up with made less and less sense, and Dad was no help…though he did bring them hot chocolate, loaded with big gooey marshmallows and a candy cane hung on each mug.

The night passed way too slow. Nothing could be more boring than Christmas Eve in a hospital, though following the nurses around to the other rooms was fascinating. But then the annoyed nurses had Dad make the boys stay in their room, and from that point, it was a long, boring stretch of nothing.

Getting released the next morning and walking out into the bright, snowy Christmas day was true freedom. Wind stinging his cheeks, the early morning sun turning the snow into a blanket of glitter, Joe stretched his arms out, turned his face up to catch snowflakes on his tongue —

Frank's snowball caught him square on the chest.

Before Aunt Gertrude could do more than squawk a token protest, Dad joined in, and the fight turned into a fast, furious three-way war among the parked cars. Frank was hampered by crutches and cast, so Joe had the advantage of mobility and a fast duck, but Dad's aim was _evil_.

"That's enough," Aunt Gertrude said tartly. "We need to get you boys — _Fenton!" _Dad nailed _her_ with two fast snowballs in succession, and that did it. Joe never, ever, dreamed that Aunt Gertrude could throw that fast — or had such good aim.

Finally, though, it had to end. In the car, shaking snow off his stocking hat (resulting in another mini-war in the backseat as Frank shook his own wool hat over Joe), something occurred to Joe. Aunt Gertrude had brought his and Frank's coats with her — but it was Joe's _old_ coat, with his wrists sticking out a couple inches past the cuffs. "Where's my Red Sox coat?"

Silence. "It wasn't on you when you were found," Dad said finally. "Neither of you had your coats."

Joe bit his lip. The kidnappers had stolen his coat? He'd saved up for it all fall, doing yard work and running errands for neighbors. He'd _earned _that coat!

Suddenly another image surfaced, him and his brother huddled in cold dark, something snarling, howling, sniffing right outside…

"I'll get you a new one," Dad said, and Joe blinked, startled. "Promise."

The image was disturbing, the memory unsettling, but Joe wasn't given much chance to think about it. Once home, the brothers were sent upstairs to take baths and clean up. The house smelled of pine, baking ham, and cinnamon; Aunt Gertrude had the stereo on, filling the home with cheery Christmas carols from the local radio station. Waiting for Frank to finish his turn in the bathroom, Joe finally undid the braid in his hair and pulled the feather free.

He'd never seen anything like it. It was as long as his finger, round and soft, striped with jagged cream and brown lines. On impulse, he held it in a patch of sunlight from the window: the feather had an odd rainbow sheen, like oil on water.

"Here," Frank said from the doorway, and tossed Joe the white bead — no, not a bead at all, but a translucent white pebble carved with two odd symbols: a backward Z and a Y with a line dividing the two arms. Frank sat by Joe on the bed and took the feather in return. "Wow. That's _weird."_

"Wonder what they put in Kris's hair?" Joe said.

Frank shook his head. "More important question. What's this stuff supposed to mean? And why braid our hair?"

More mysteries. Joe set the feather and the stone carefully on his dresser, right next to the carved cedar box that Mom had given him, then something else occurred to him. He turned, looked at Fred — no, the bat was still there.

"You had it with you," Frank said suddenly. "I know you did. I remember…" His voice trailed off; his face grew troubled.

"Boys," Aunt Gertrude called, from the stairs. "Hurry up. There's company coming over."

Frank rolled his eyes; Joe sighed as he tromped into the bathroom. The mystery had to wait. They had a bigger problem to deal with, just what they needed to cap off the whole mysterious day — family.


	21. Big Brothers

_A/N: Thanks to Stork Hardy, Leyapearl & bhar for the reviews! All you readers seriously rock. Oh, and if you're interested in such things, the story that Gramma Kelly tells is that of Thomas the Rhymer, an old Scottish ballad. Google it & love it! ;)  
_

_#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#_

* * *

"Company" turned out to be not only the grandparents, but most of the cousins, aunts, and uncles, the whole horde crammed together in one noisy, cheery, slightly drunk gathering. The kitchen table and counters were overloaded with Aunt Gertrude's baked ham spiked with pineapple and clove, homemade cranberry sauce, mince pie, cookies, and Grandma Hardy's soda bread. Even better, Gramma Kelly had brought over huge tins of old-fashioned candy, wavy rainbows, cinnamon red-hots, taffy, and puffy-striped butter mints that melted instantly on the tongue. All the Christmas lights were on, tree, banister, and fireplace mantle, and Dad had put more cinnamon pine-cones on the fire, so the living room smelled warm and cozy.

Sitting in a cloud of lavender and baby powder over on the big couch, Great-Aunt Rose tried to get everyone to sing along to the radio and insisted on hugging Frank and Joe whenever they got too close. Uncle Mick's giggly daughters plied Frank with cookies and begged to draw on his cast — not that Frank minded, especially when Joe snagged the markers and turned all the cute bunnies into toothy long-horned dinosaurs. Grandpa Hardy, Dad, and the other men had taken over the kitchen to exchange war stories, Uncle Jack's face already flushed from Budweiser, and Aunt Gertrude and the older women were gathered in a loose circle around the coffee table, clucking over the latest knitting magazines. Finally, Frank ensconced himself on the small sofa in self-defense; everyone wanted to hear the story, everyone wanted to hug him, everyone wanted to tell him what brave boys he and Joe had been —

Not that Frank minded the attention, but if only he could _remember!_

"Here, Frank." Cousin Molly handed him a plate of cookies, then helped him rearrange the pillows under his ankle. "Does it hurt much?"

Putting on his_ trying-to-be-brave_ face, Frank smiled weakly at her; Molly was one of the older cousins. There were benefits to a broken ankle. Frank set the cookie plate down next to the other plate, loaded with ham, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, courtesy of Aunt Carol. "Lots. But I'll survive. Thanks for helping me."

"You're so brave," Molly said. "Just like your dad."

"I was kidnapped, too." Joe plopped down on the floor right below Frank and held up his bandaged arm, where the IV had been.

Molly smiled and patted Joe on the head. "You need anything else, Frank, just say it."

"Some more hot chocolate would be great, Moll." Frank made as if to get up, grimaced as the movement jarred his ankle. "I can get it."

"Don't you dare!" Molly mock-scolded. "You sit right there and rest. I'll get it." She threaded her way back through the horde to the kitchen.

With wide-eyed innocence, Frank looked down at his brother. "Want a cookie, Joe?"

Grandma Hardy's voice floated over the noisy gathering, a bit too loud and far too clear. "It's so cute, the way he takes care of his baby brother, even when he's hurt."

"Worm," Joe growled.

Yeah. Definite benefits. Smiling, Frank closed his eyes and settled back on the sofa.

But staying on the sofa wasn't the best, either. It put him at the mercy of _all_ the relatives, and finally, Frank had to get up and move again. He maneuvered back to the kitchen for a Coke, bore up under the back-slaps from Grandpa and the uncles as he listened to the war stories for a bit (earning him a _well-done _smile and a shoulder-squeeze from Dad), then came back out to the living room.

"…_and see you not yon bonny road, that winds about the ferny brae? That is the road to fair Elfland, where you and I this night shall go…"_

Gramma Kelly had already started her story-telling. She sat in the recliner next to the fireplace and Christmas tree, and Joe had squeezed in next to her, just like both brothers had when they were little. That had Frank staring. Joe _hated_ getting cuddled lately, especially when Gramma was telling stories.

_"…and you shall hold your tongue, whatever you may hear or see, for speak a word in Elfyn-land, you'll never win back to your own country…"_

Watching his brother uncertainly, Frank eased himself down to sit at Gramma's feet, leaning against the cushions with his head pillowed in his arms so Gramma could stroke his forehead. The recliner wasn't big enough for all three anymore, but Frank didn't mind the floor, especially next to the fireplace. Letting Gramma cuddle them while she told stories was much better than Aunt Rose's drunken hugs, and for once, Frank didn't mind being treated like a little kid, either. Gramma had been Mom's mom, and if Frank closed his eyes, he could pretend it was Mom's voice telling her favorite fairy tales.

"…_it was murky night, there was nae starlight. They waded through blood to the knee, and they saw neither sun nor moon, but heard the roaring of the sea…"_

The story had a rhythm to it, steady and sure, and Gramma rocked slowly, not enough to disturb Frank's position, but just enough to be comforting. The rocking, with Gramma's gentle touch on his head and the warmth from the fireplace at his back, all put Frank into a half-doze. But something about her story was familiar, disturbing, unsettling…

"Why, thank you, Mar!" Aunt Gertrude said, from the front door. "Joe, come get this basket, please."

Frank looked up. Aunt Gertrude was taking a steaming casserole dish from Mar, something steaming with the sweet smell of baked corn, along with a jug of Mar's home-brewed honey wine. Staring at the horde of people, Kris stood behind Mar, her hands clutching a large covered basket.

"Oh, isn't she _precious."_ Aunt Rose's face was as flushed as Uncle Jack's. "She looks like a cute little elf."

Once she'd had a couple shots of whiskey, Aunt Rose was enough to scare anyone, let alone a little abused runaway. Frank struggled to his feet as Joe squirmed off the recliner. Best to run interference before Aunt Rose got it in her head to try to hug Kris, but then Kris surprised them.

"Elves aren't cute," Kris piped up. "They're_ mean._ And I'm not little, I'm _eleven._"

Startled silence greeted that, broken by Gramma Kelly's cackle. Frank stood there, unsure how to react. First Joe let Gramma cuddle him, now Kris was speaking up to the adults. Whatever the kidnappers had done, maybe it hadn't been all bad.

"I have to show you guys something," Kris whispered to Frank and Joe when they came over. "In private."

"I can handle that." Mar took the basket away from Joe, then gave Kris a gentle push towards the stairs. "Go on, _shiché'é._ Before you burst."

"_Shiché'é?"_ Joe said.

"She'll tell you," Mar said. "Scoot."

"Don't go hiding in your room now," Aunt Gertrude warned the brothers as they headed up the stairs. "There's company, mind."

Frank sighed. As if they hadn't figured that out already.

The moment they got into the brothers' bedroom, Kris wiggled out of her coat and pulled two papers out from the inside pocket. "Look. Look!" She spread them out on Joe's bed.

"You got a _Monkees_ sweatshirt!" Joe said indignantly. "I'm jealous."

Frank looked down at the paper: a birth certificate? Then he saw both Mar's and Kris's names printed on it, _then_ saw the second paper: a Certificate of Adoption. "They finished it!"

"_Shiché'é," _Kris said, bubbling over — Frank had never heard her sound so happy, "it means _daughter._ It's _real._ It's official. Mar's really my mom now like you said and those other people can't do anything about it. It's really _real!"_

"Kris, that's _great!"_ Joe grabbed her into a laughing, enthusiastic hug; she squeaked in surprise. "That means you're really an Indian!"

"So your birthday was last week?" Frank said, grinning.

"I'm officially eleven," Kris said proudly. "_Amá's_ gonna talk to the school and get me moved up to Joe's year. I'll have to take catch-up classes, but I won't be in with the babies anymore."

"_Amá?" _Joe said.

Tears glimmered in her eyes, but Kris was still smiling. "Mom."

"Now we need to get you a birthday present," Frank said. "You're lucky Mar didn't make it Christmas. That'd really suck." Memory nudged him, something…something Joe had said. Somewhere. Frank straightened, snapped his fingers. "Got it!"

He limped over to his desk, set the crutches down carefully next to it, then pulled out the thick pack of construction paper, a ruler, and Crayola markers. No time for fancy. Just keep it simple.

"He gets like this," Joe said to Kris. "It's an older brother thing. He thinks he knows everything and he won't tell you anything until you beg him for the secret. Which we won't."

Frank ignored him as he carefully drew the letters in black marker. This was more important.

"We really aren't going to beg," Joe said. "Really. We're not."

"You don't have to." Frank eyed the paper critically. Not bad, for a rush job. "We just need to sign it to make it official."

"Sign what?" Joe said, as he and Kris came over to the desk...

…then silence.

"Oh," Kris said.

"Let's fingerprint it, too." Joe grinned at Frank over Kris's head. "They do that on birth certificates. That'll make it _really_ official, then they can't say we faked it. I'll go get the kit." He ran out of the room.

Kris hadn't moved, staring at the construction paper.

"You okay?" Frank said to her.

Mutely, she nodded.

He watched her for a moment. "It's okay and everything? I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to."

"It's fine," Kris whispered. "It really is."

Joe burst back in. "Aunt Rose just had her fourth shot. She's _huggy."_ He set the metal box down on Frank's desk, clicked it open and pulled out the ink pad, cleaner, and rag.

"Just the thumb prints," Frank said. "There's not enough room for three whole hands."

"I know." Joe signed the paper, then rolled his thumb on the open ink pad, then against the paper next to his signature. Frank snagged the pad, did the same, just like Dad had showed them, then Joe pushed the pad in front of Kris. "Your turn, tagalong."

"You mean it?" Kris's voice broke. "You really mean it?"

"We wouldn't do the fingerprints if we didn't," Frank said solemnly. "That makes it legally binding."

"You forgot those words." Joe grabbed up the green marker and carefully added 'legally binding' across the top of the paper. "There. Go ahead."

Her hand shook, but slowly, carefully, Kris signed her name right below theirs in red marker, and then Frank took her hand, rolled her thumb on the ink pad, then against the paper. Perfect. A clear, legal thumb print:

_Official Certificate of Brother & Sister _(with _"legally binding_" now scrawled over an arrow between "official" and _"certificate"_). _This hereby certifies that we are hereby Kris's real official brothers and she is hereby our real official sister:_

_Joe Hardy _(smeared smudge)

_Frank Hardy _(bigger smudge)

_Kris Mountainhawk_ (smudge smear tear-stain)

"I can get Dad to make another one that's more official looking," Frank said, watching Kris. She hadn't stopped staring at the paper.

"No!" Kris snatched the paper up, clutched it against her chest, leaving ink smudges across the Monkees logo. "It's…it's perfect. It really is."

"Let's get Dad to notarize it," Joe said. "That'll make it even more official."

Sometimes his brother could be positively brilliant. All three ran out of the room, down the stairs, and into Dad's closed study — and before either of the brothers could yell for Dad, Dad stood in the doorway.

"Boys, what did I tell you about going in here when I'm not with you?"

"It's business, Dad," Frank said.

"We need you to notarize something," Joe said, at the same time.

"We're making Kris our official sister. We need you to make it legal."

"Notaries do that, right? They make things legal by stamping it with that seal. That's what you said."

"It doesn't make you her dad or anything," Frank assured Dad. "It just makes us her brothers. I was careful about that." Frank looked at Kris. "He can be your dad if he wants, but that needs another certificate."

"He'd better not be her dad, Frank," Joe said. "That means he'd have to marry Mar and then she'd be our mother. Mom wouldn't like that."

Dad waited through the flood of words, then turned back to the living room. "Mar? Can you come in here a moment, please?" He carefully took the paper from Kris, looked it over. "You signed this of your own free will? They didn't bribe you or anything?"

"Dad!"

"I have to ask, Joe," Dad said sternly, as Mar came into the study; he handed her the paper. "This is serious. Mar and I have to sign it, too, since you three are underage. Kris?"

"No, sir," Kris whispered. "I mean, yes, sir…um…they didn't make me. I did it by myself."

"This won't make you our mom, will it?" Joe said to Mar. "I want to be an Indian, but we've already got Mom and she's still watching us."

"No, dear," Mar said, smiling. "You can be brothers and sister without having the same parents." The smile turned into a full grin at Dad. "In my tribe, they have to present us with a buffalo skin to show their sincerity."

There weren't any buffalo in Bayport that Frank knew about. "We got kidnapped together. Does that count?"

"I can go beat up Fred again," Joe offered.

"They blew up the fairy cave," Kris said. "That's better than a buffalo. Well, you _did," _she added, when Joe and Frank stared.

Mar's mouth twitched. "I'll accept that. Fenton?"

"Works for me." Dad had drawn two more straight lines on the certificate. "Mar, you need to sign here, then watch me sign. Were these fingerprints done by a licensed expert?"

"We did them just like you taught us," Joe said proudly.

Frank barely heard. He was watching Kris. Blew up a fairy cave? When?

"Good enough." Dad signed the paper, then used the metal stamp to emboss the certificate with the State of Massachusetts's seal, then rubber-stamped it with his name and notary-public title.

"I'll check with our chief," Mar said seriously. "But I think having a Navajo sister qualifies you to be Navajo, too."

"Really?" Joe's face lit up. "So I get to wear warpaint and feathers and everything?"

"Joe, we can't wear paint when we're helping Dad with a case," Frank said, still trying to understand the 'fairy cave' part. Maybe the drugs the kidnappers used had confused Kris's memory, too; she was smaller than him and Joe, after all, so such things would hit her harder.

That had to be it. That made sense. Mystery solved.

Mar was grinning again. "We don't wear warpaint or feathers. Paint's only for religious ceremonies." Suddenly she gathered Frank, Joe, and Kris into a huge hug, a hug that Dad joined in on.

"_Ya'át'ééh Késhmish,"_ Mar said.


	22. Epilogue

**_A/N: I hope you folks have had as much fun reading this as I've had writing it! Thanks to Leyapearl & Stork Hardy here & Copagirl, JD & rokia of the Hardy Detective Agency for the latest reviews - as always, all my readers rock! _ **

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_**Epilogue**_

"_They won't remember," Mar had said gently, as they'd walked over to the Hardy's home. "That was what your brownie did. He made them forget."_

It had been a long day.

Watching the snow fall, Kris stood out on the back porch, the only light from the patio door behind her. It felt strange, knowing Mar was really her mother now. Scary-strange, but wonderful, too.

Kris shivered. The endless white, the falling flakes, the bright crescent of the waning moon, the still-quiet of the early evening: it all just added to the strangeness.

After they'd left the Hardys, Mar had insisted on driving out to the Mortons' farm with another jug of the honey-wine and a loaf of homemade cheese bread. "A peace offering," Mar had claimed. When they'd pulled into the long gravel drive — relit with the glowing candles and white paper sacks — Kris spotted the back-hoe behind the house.

"I'm filling that shaft in once they get all the bones recovered," Mr. Morton had said. He'd accepted the gift with a somber 'thank you'; Kris could hear Chet and Iola back in the kitchen, arguing over Monopoly. "No more kids'll get lost out there. Can't believe it's been there all these years and we didn't know it." He'd glanced over to where Old Ma Morton sat by the fireplace, snoring in her rocking chair. "Mamaw remembered that cloth. Said it was something her ma used all the time for their dresses."

"So it was her sister?" Mar said.

Mr. Morton had nodded. "We'll be holding funeral this week, once the coroner's done. The boys don't remember?"

Kris had looked down at the polished wood floors, dark with age and stains. She didn't know what the Mortons had been told, but she was pretty sure it wasn't about fairies.

"No," Mar said quietly. "It's probably for the best."

"Probably." Mr. Morton's face had darkened. "Worthless scumbags that grabbed 'em, won't get on my property again. I'll be fencing off the woods, let the dogs have the run of it. Anyone comes on that's not supposed to, they'll be on 'em." He grinned down at Kris. "Not that it'll stop you kids, mind. Dogs'll just lick you to death."

Mrs. Morton had come out from the kitchen, bearing a covered basket; Mar took it, and Kris sneaked a peek under the cover. Cookies and fudge. "Mar, could you make sure the boys get these?" Mrs. Morton looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Tell them I'm sorry."

"You didn't know they'd be grabbed," Mar said. "None of us did."

"No," Mrs. Morton said. "But it was because I yelled that they ran off like that and got hurt."

Mar glanced down at Kris; Kris bowed her head. "Joe and Kris shouldn't have been up in that tree," Mar said mildly. "Children have to learn to take the consequences. That's what makes them adults."

The drive back home had been quiet, broken only by the wind whistling through Mar's Jeep. "_Amá,"_ Kris said finally, small, shamed, "it was all my fault. I was up in that tree first. I went out after Click. Frank and Joe were just trying to make sure I didn't get hurt."

Mar had reached, grasped her hand. "Frank and Joe made their own choices. Just as you did. I'm glad that they chose to follow you. Too many others would have just let you run away." Quieter, "You went after them, too, _shiché'é._ You made it right, and I think some deep part of them remembers that."

Kris hung her head. "Because of me," she whispered, "Click got tossed out of the fairy realm. He _helped_ us, _amá._ Now he doesn't have a home anymore."

Silence. Finally, as they were pulling into the driveway, "Click made his own choices, too," Mar said. "He chose to do what he did, all of it. God gave us all free will, even the Sidhe." Mar had sat a moment, staring at the garage door, then turned to give Kris a direct look. "Do what you think is right, little squirrel."

So now Kris stood out here, in the snowy night, a bowl of milk and a plate of cookies on the patio table. Thinking about it, though, the little brownie might not chance getting so close to a human's house. With a quick glance around the yards, seeing no one, Kris picked up the offering and carefully carried it out to the sugar maple, setting the bowl and plate down at the snow-covered roots.

"I'm sorry, Click," Kris said quietly. "I don't know if you followed us or if you're listening or if you're waiting to get me like you did Frank and Joe." Her brothers, now. Her big, resilient, brave brothers. Their certificate probably wouldn't count in the grown-ups' world, but Kris didn't care. It mattered where it really counted, down-deep. "It was really rotten, what you did. We didn't hurt you and we tried to protect you, but you made us choose between telling the truth or letting Frank die."

Silence. Nothing but silence, the wind, the snow.

"Maybe you didn't think you had a choice, either. Maybe you didn't know the grown-ups just wanted to help, too." Kris kept her gaze on the milk, watching the snowflakes fall into it, small floating ripples. She hadn't thought she had a choice, either, before. Before Mar. "But you still helped us. So I still think you're a friend. And I'll help you, if I can. If you'll let me. It's up to you." She turned away; she was getting too cold. "Enjoy the cookies."

Movement caught her attention, and she looked up. Frank and Joe were watching from their window.

Great. Just great. They probably thought she was giving cookies to the tree.

They saw her looking up, and Joe started making faces at her, pulling his mouth open with his fingers, sticking his tongue out, crossing his eyes. Kris only stood there, arms crossed, trying to give them her best Mar-The-Implacable-Indian-Warrior imitation, until, grinning, Frank slid the window open and started to call something out —

Temptation was too much. Kris snatched up a fast handful of snowball, threw it, and scored right on their screen, splattering them both.

"_Hey!"_ Joe yelped, right with Frank's, _"Kris!"_…

Then…unmistakably…the sound of her big brothers laughing their butts off.

Smiling, Kris went back inside to say goodnight to Mom.


End file.
